LIBRARY OF CONGRESS?] 

Sheli..15.5 5. 

| -'tlNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS 

BY 

V 

Dr. HERMANN BOXITZ 

TRAXSLATED FROM THE FOURTH GERMAX EDITIOX 
By LEWIS R. PACKARD 




NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN S Q V A E E 

1 880 



TJ^ : 



a*\ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



The following lecture was delivered in I860 in 
Vienna, and has passed through four editions in 
Germany. It has been recognized by many schol- 
ars as presenting in brief space and with fairness 
the points involved in the discussion, and the prog- 
ress which has been made towards a solution of 
the problem. I have been led to translate it main- 
ly by the fact, as I suppose it to be, that there is no 
work in English which gives any just idea of the 
difficulties in the way of accepting the Homeric 
poems as the production of one poet, unless it be 
the large, and expensive work of Mure, which de- 
fends the unity of authorship. It seemed desira- 
ble that there should be accessible in English a 
partial statement of the reasons which have led so 
many German scholars to doubt the unity of au- 
thorship of the poems. Besides, the notes contain 
a very valuable, though not of course a complete, 



4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

bibliography of the subject, which would be of 
great service to one taking up the study of the 
Homeric question. 

I have translated the lecture in full ; but in the 
notes I have taken the liberty of omitting and con- 
densing, so far as could be done without detracting 
from their value. The references I have verified so 
far as was within my power. 

Lewis R. Packard. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 



On the threshold of Greek literature, as its ear- 
liest known work, not to us only, but to the Greeks 
themselves at the height of their historical devel- 
opment, 1 stand two majestic poems, to which few 
other works of profane literature can be compared, 
either for manifold influence on the intellectual 
life of their own nation, or for admiring recogni- 
tion among all peoples of high culture, even after 
the lapse of twenty-five centuries — the Iliad and 
Odyssey of Homer. It seemed even to the ancients 
that the imperishable works of Greek literature, 
especially in poetry, were but the variously unfold- 
ed flowers of a tree whose root and trunk were the 
Homeric poems. 2 The Greek epic poetry was at 
first an echo, in later times a conscious imitation, 
of Homer. The founder of Greek tragedy in its 
classic grandeur, the mighty Aeschylus, declared 
himself that his poems were but fragments fallen 



b THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

from the rich table of Homer; 3 and the choicest 
praise of Sophokles — that master-poet whose dra- 
mas, even in modern times, in feeble reproductions, 
without the glory of festive representation, without 
the rhythmic dance of the chorus, without the in- 
imitable flavor of the original language, yet fasci- 
nate their hearers — was that his tragedies eminently 
displayed a Homeric character. 4 The Greek his- 
torians based their work on Homer, at first in 
unquestioning reception of his legends and invol- 
untary imitation of his narrative style, afterwards 
in critical explanation of the subject-matter of his 
poems. 5 The Greek philosophy, although, in its ef- 
fort to solve by the intellect the highest problems 
of humanity, it gradually came into most decided 
conflict with the popular faith and with the Ho- 
meric poems, the most sacred representative of that 
faith, 6 yet, at the same time, sought eagerly to find 
in those poems the foundation of its convictions. 7 
From Homer, from certain particular verses of 
the Iliad, Pheidias, in the highest bloom of Greek 
sculpture, derived the idea of the Zeus which he 
set forth $t Olympia for the veneration of the peo- 
ple. 8 At Athens, the intellectual centre of Greece, 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 7 

the systematic reading of the Homeric poems was 
made, by an institution of Solon's, an important 
part of the greatest national festival from the be- 
ginning of the sixth century before Christ. 9 From 
the time that reading and writing were introduced 
as a constant element into the education of the 
Athenian youth, the poems of Homer, especially 
the Iliad, formed the primary and necessary ma- 
terial for training in these matters, as well as in 
memorizing and in reading aloud; 10 and when, in 
the fifth century B.C., a young Athenian of noble 
family boasts in company that he still knows by 
heart the whole Iliad and Odyssey, no one finds 
anything incredible in the statement. 11 Whatever 
Greek classic, in poetry or prose, we read, 12 what- 
ever branch of Greek culture we stud} T , an intimate 
acquaintance with Homer is an indispensable con- 
dition of a thorough understanding of it, for the 
literature and all the intellectual life of the Hel- 
lenic people are bound by a thousand threads to 
the poems of Homer. 

To this universality of influence among his own 
people, 13 of which the instances above given are only 
hints, corresponds the range of extension abroad of 



8 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

these poems. They have gone far beyond the lim- 
its which are ordinarily set for the greatest works of 
genius by the lapse of time, the divergencies of na- 
tional character, and the growth of new civilizations. 
Since the leading modern nations have definitely 
recognized the connection of their own culture 
with that of the classical nations of antiquity, and 
have found for this conviction an expression, nec- 
essarily varying in different times, in the form they 
have given to the higher education, the Homeric 
poems have taken a prominent place in the train- 
ing of all whose early years give them an oppor- 
tunity to study Greek. Although the learning of 
that lan^ua.o-e i s in some cases made much too la- 
borious, so that in after-years one looks back upon 
the time spent in it as so much fruitless waste, yet 
commonly the reading of Homer forms a bright 
spot on the dark background. For so soon as the 
first struggle with the discouraging abundance of 
forms and words is over, the fresh immortal youth 
in the poetry affects the student with a resistless 
charm. And though the delicate bloom of the 
original is destroyed by the loss of the sounds 
themselves in a translation, yet there remains a 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 9 

vigorous material of true poetry so indestructible 
that all the cultivated peoples of modern times re- 
gard a successful translation of Homer as a real 
gain to their own national literature. 14 Thus, the 
effect upon our own German literature of the ap- 
pearance of Yoss's translation is still manifest from 
the letters and memories of that most active period 
of our literary history; and it will continue to be 
marked in its influence upon our poetry when those 
recollections shall have long lost their freshness. 
The poetry of Homer in the version of Yoss be- 
came a common inheritance of all cultivated per- 
sons, in which every one felt it his duty to claim a 
share. It cannot, indeed, be compared with the 
original in exquisite effects of language, in the nat- 
ural flow of the rhythm, in life-like richness of sig- 
nificance, in picturesqueness of epithets; but its 
true and faithful reproduction of many character- 
istics of the poems widened the circle of those 
wdio could advance from vague admiration to dis- 
tinct knowledge of the name and poetry of Homer. 
The sharp clearness of sensual perceptions and the 
poet's self-abandonment to them, the power of nat- 
ural passion, the vividness of presentation of out- 



10 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. 

ward events or inward emotion, and all this con- 
trolled by a judicious moderation which seems 
to have been the happy endowment of the Greek 
intellect — these characteristics of Homer became, 
as it were, a standard of truth to nature, to which 
every descriptive poem must conform. 15 For, to 
use Goethe's words, " Homer presents realities, we 
mostly effects ; he paints the terrible, w r e the terror; 
he the charming, we the charm." 16 When Les- 
sing compares poetry, as to the power of represen- 
tation, with the plastic arts, and draws with con- 
clusive criticism the fixed boundaries of the two 
fields, it is in Homer especially, whose truth to nat- 
ure he trusts as if it w T ere Nature herself, that lie 
finds the norm for poetry. No poet of our time 
and of our people approaches so nearly to Homer's 
object! veness as Goethe himself, who so sharply 
contrasted him with modern poets in the words 
above quoted, and it was Goethe who gave up Nau- 
sikaa as a theme after it had fascinated him and 
he had already sketched a plan of treatment, on 
the ground that no one could safely venture into 
such rivalry with Homer. 17 

When we consider thus the power of these 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 11 

poems, we understand liow their author was thought 
worthy by his own people of heroic, almost of di- 
vine, honors, 18 and was referred to by them as " the 
poet," without further definition. What the admi- 
ration of his people expressed in this way has been 
confirmed in its true significance by the testimony 
of succeeding generations. 

But the almost divine honor of this hero-poet in 
his ow r n nation, and the undisputed recognition he 
obtained through more than two thousand years, 
could not protect him from the sudden uprising of 
doubts, one may say, as to his very existence, and 
of a theory of the most opposite character as to the 
origin of the Iliad and Odyssey. We may state 
the new views somewhat as follows : 

The Iliad and Odyssey, which we call the poems 
of Homer, are not the work of a single poet ; but 
each of them — certainly, at least, of the older of 
the two, the Iliad, this may be confidently said — is 
made up of the separate songs of different poets. 
For hundreds of years there were in circulation 
among the Greek tribes heroic songs about the in- 
cidents of the Trojan legend, each one of moderate 
length, each containing only a single transaction, 



12 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

designed to be sung with the accompaniment of 
the lyre, and to be heard by a company who, after 
a banquet at any festival occasion, would enjoy re- 
calling the achievements of their ancestors. In 
course of time these separate songs were combined 
according to the order of the story, at first into 
large groups and then into the complete wholes, 
pretty much as we now have them, and were then, 
at last, made permanent in written form by the 
orders of Peisistratos, in the sixth century before 
Christ. It is, then, not the work of a single man, 
but the poetic product of a long period, which we 
find incorporated into the Iliad. 

These are some of the principal ideas which F. 
A. Wolf, the founder of philological science as now 
understood, set forth near the close of the last cen- 
tury in his Prolegomena to the Homeric poems. 19 
As the veneration for the name of Homer, then 
freshly intensified by the recent publication of 
Voss's translation, had not been confined to the 
narrow circle of professional Greek scholars, so 
the excitement produced by Wolfs book extended 
far beyond that limited range. 20 The philosopher 
Fichte declared, out of lively sympathy, that he 



THE OBIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 13 

himself had reached, on a priori grounds, the same 
result that Wolf had attained through historical re- 
search, an expression of approval to which Wolf re- 
plied with humorous irony. Of more weight was 
the entire assent to his views of the acute scholar 
W.von Humboldt. On the other hand, Schiller, who 
maintained with Humboldt a lively and fruitful 
exchange of thought on aesthetic questions, declared 
it absolutely barbarous to think of dismembering 
the Iliad or of its haying ever been put together 
from originally separate songs. 21 Lest we should 
suppose this the unanimous verdict of true poets 
on the theories of philologists, let us hear at once 
Goethe's enthusiastic assent to Wolfs views 22 — 

k, Erst die Gesundheit des Mamies, cler. endlich vom Xa- 

men Hoineros 
Kiilm mis befreiend, ims audi raft in die vollere 
Balm ! 
Derm wer wagte mit Gottern den Kanrpf. und wer mit 

dem Einen ? 
Docli Homeride zu sein, aucli nur als letzter. ist 
sell on." ' 

Still the same Goethe, in his old age, withdrew his 
assent to Wolfs revolutionary view, and preferred 



14 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

to believe in, and gladly open his mind to, Homer 
as an individual, his poems as a whole. 23 

We cannot here trace out further the sketch of 
these various and varying impressions made by 
Wolf's views. It must be enough to have given 
the principal facts in connection with the leading 
names, which may serve as a type of what went on 
in the educated world at large. The waves of dis- 
cussion would soon have subsided, and peaceful ac- 
quiescence in the traditional views have returned, 
had nothing but a troublesome paradox been thrown 
out to the world in Wolf's book. The merit of the 
book, that which makes it a notable and fruitful 
event in the field of historical science, is not the 
boldness of its attack upon a generally received 
opinion, but the conscientiousness of its method. 
For nearly twenty years Wolf silently entertained 
and examined the ideas which are unfolded in his 
Prolegomena. 24 All that could be detected by an 
eye steadily fixed on the subject in the laboriously 
gathered traditions of antiquity, in the poems them- 
selves, in the general progress of culture — all this lie 
considered with the strictest conscientiousness be- 
fore he finally, with unmistakable reluctance, 25 re- 



THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMEEIC POEMS. 15 

solved to break loose from a belief which had been 
no less warmly cherished by him than by others, and 
which only the pitiless force of reasoning compel- 
led the earnest investigator to abandon. This merit 
of his book no one has remarked more justly than 
F. Schlegel, a man to whom certainly cannot be 
ascribed any pleasure in the overthrow or weaken- 
ing of an old and settled state of things. " Wolfs 
book/' says he, " by the thirst for knowledge and 
love of truth which inspire it, and by its firm grasp 
and close linking-together of so long a series of 
thoughts and observations in such a field, is a 
thorough model of the investigation of a point 
in ancient history, and yet its defenders compre- 
hended it almost as little, to say nothing of using 
it, as its assailants did." The want which Schle- 
gel saw in Wolfs contemporaries was made good 
in time ; the following generation, no longer be- 
wildered by the novelty of his theory, gave his in- 
vestigations their true value by developing fully 
the various lines of research first opened by him. 
The thorough study of the poems in regard to their 
internal consistency and their linguistic and met- 
rical form, the examination of all the statements 



1G THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. 

of ancient writers bearing upon Homer and the 
Homeric poems, the combination of these research- 
es with a study of the general course of culture 
among the Greeks, and the comparison of their re- 
sults with kindred phenomena in other nations — all 
these points must be separately and fully weighed 
before a settled conclusion can be attained. To 
one scholar, K. Lachmann, 26 the acute investigator 
in the field of the early German poetry, belongs in- 
disputably the special merit of having given, in his 
minute and exhaustive study of one single point — 
the self-consistency of the Iliad — a model for such 
examinations, and an important contribution to the 
solving of the problem. He does not, however, 
stand alone ; for in this field, as in the others, each 
of which must be separately worked, other scholars 
have brought further support to the view proposed 
by Wolf. And, at the same time, with no less 
acuteness and zeal for the truth, has everything 
been used which could support the traditional be- 
lief in the original unity of each poem, and in Ho- 
mer as their author. 27 The great importance of the 
Homeric poems, not only in relation to Greek his- 
tory and literature, but also to all epic poetry, has 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 17 

brought it about that the " Homeric question/' to 
use the common phrase, in all the course of the 
discussion as well as at its beginning, has secured 
the attention of learned men even outside of the 
circle of specialists. But for such lookers-on it is 
difficult almost impossible, to find their way through 
the labyrinth of separate investigations of all kinds, 
which form by this time an extensive literature in 
themselves. 28 The fatigue of this confused discus- 
sion is producing now an effect somewhat similar 
to that which the novelty of the theory at first pro- 
duced. Sympathies and antipathies, convictions 
which, however well-founded, have nothing to do 
with the question, have more weight than real 
study of the subject. Opprobrious epithets occa- 
sionally take the place of arguments. A foolish 
timidity suspects in this attack upon the traditions 
of two thousand years — for that seems, at first, the 
tendency of Wolfs ideas — a connection with other 
tendencies of the time, tendencies with which pure 
historical research has nothing to do. An aesthetic 
dogmatism which, as we have seen, can shelter it- 
self behind the names of Schiller and Goethe de- 
spises the barbarous pedantry which cuts up great 

9 



18 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

poetic creations into fragments ; and a frivolity 
which is not ashamed to put on airs of scientific 
omniscience looks with pity on the long-since re- 
futed paradoxes of "Wolf. It is impossible, in a 
single lecture of popular character, to go through 
such an involved discussion, and it would be un- 
seemly to urge in such a form one's personal views 
on disputed points. But it may be possible to 
show on what grounds the whole question as to 
the origin of the Homeric poems is justified — what 
are the means for its solution, and within what 
narrow limits the matters still in dispute between 
the opposed parties have been restricted. These 
are the questions which will now occupy us. 

" He who doubts that the Iliad and Odyssey, es- 
sentially in their present form, are the work of one 
poet, and that poet Homer, each originally a single 
mental product, is in conflict with the unanimous 
conviction of all antiquity. How can any one, 
separated by thousands of years from the period of 
the poems, possessing only scanty remains of so 
abundant a literature, be so foolish or so daring as 
to contradict the unanimous testimony of Homer's 
own nation ?" 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 19 

This idea, expressed in manifold forms, excludes 
from the start all question as to the origin of the 
Homeric poems as unwarranted and inadmissible. 
It would have great weight if only it were quite 
true. Such a Homer, however, the author of these 
two poems, belonging, as any actual person must, 
to a definite time and a definite place, though he 
has gradually won a position in manuals of history, 
yet is not directly attested by any real historic doc- 
ument. Let us see what is the real content of tra- 
dition as to the principal points in regard to Homer 
and the Homeric poems. 29 

The ancient Greeks possessed, besides the Iliad 
and Odyssey, a number of other epic poems of some 
extent connected with the Trojan myths, 30 which 
were concerned with parts of the legend preceding 
and following these two poems. The existence of 
this body of epic poetry can be traced back to a con- 
siderable distance beyond the beginning of the Greek 
national life. 31 Of it all we possess now but a few 
fragments, with some summaries of the narratives 
and other notices; yet there are enough data not 
only to bring before us the great extent of the epic 
poetry on the Trojan theme, but also to enable us 



20 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

to recognize the fact tliat these other poems, though 
related to the Iliad and Odyssey, are distinguished 
from them by characteristic differences. 33 In regard 
to every one of these outlying Trojan epics, there 
exists a tradition uniform as to the place of origi- 
nation, and uniform, or in some cases varying be- 
tween two names, as to the name of the author. 33 
Moreover, the time of composition belongs to a 
period not far removed from the light of historic 
knowledge. In spite of all this, these poems, to- 
gether with the Iliad and Odyssey, are sometimes 
ascribed to Homer. Homer is regarded as the au- 
thor not only of the Iliad and Odyssey, but, besides, 
of the other Trojan epics, either of most of them 
or of all ; or even of all these and of the so-called 
Plomeric hymns to the gods besides. This com- 
prehensive meaning is given to the name of Homer 
not only by those who were little in sympathy with 
the intellectual spirit and literature of the Greek 
people, but also by men whose statement is to us 
unquestioned authority. 34 The idea of limiting Ho- 
mer's authorship to the Iliad and Od} T ssey alone is 
held by only an individual here and there in the 
classical time ; it does not become an established 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 21 

belief until, in the third century before Christ, Al- 
exandria becomes the centre of Greek learning 
and culture. 35 This belief is therefore the result of 
study, which did not reach definite conclusion un- 
til some five hundred years had passed since the 
Iliad was a completed work. On the other hand, 
the direct historical testimony of the classical pe- 
riod ascribes to Homer works of such extent and 
such widely differing character that even the bold- 
est fancy might well hesitate to attribute them to 
a single man. 

When, then, and where did this incomparable 
genius live? It is a well-known story, embalmed 
in several Greek epigrams, 36 that seven cities con- 
tended for the honor of having been Homer's birth- 
place. Another Greek epigram gives the happy 
poetical solution of the puzzle, that no spot on 
earth, but heaven itself, is his true fatherland; 37 
but the historical solution of the difficulty is not 
at all furthered by this ingenious suggestion. For 
the numerous birthplaces of Homer are not mere- 
ly poetic fancy, but in sober prose we find a still 
greater number of claimants ; among them Smyr- 
na, Kolophon, and Miletus on the coast of Asia 



22 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

Minor; Athens in Greece proper; Ios, Chios, Ivy- 
pros, and Krete among the islands. And always, no 
matter how late in time the statement is made, 38 
some unexceptionable ancient authority is given 
for it, so that we have absolutely no right to rank 
the claim of one place clearly above that of anoth- 
er. Moreover, as to most of the places which 
claimed to be his birthplace, we find the further 
statement that there was a school there for the cul- 
tivation of epic poetry, associated by the tradition 
of art from generation to generation into a sort of 
family. 39 The tradition of such schools of poets 
exists, also, in the case of other places, as to 'which 
the statement that Homer was born or resided there 
may perhaps be only accidentally lost to us. 40 And 
when did Homer live ? We should not be sur- 
prised to find in so unhistorical a period an uncer- 
tainty of some fifty or a hundred years ; but when 
the statements as to the time of his life range from 
the period of the Greek migrations to Asia Minor — 
that is, about the middle of the eleventh century — 
down to the last third of the seventh century before 
Christ, and when all the statements fixing different 
points in this long period go back to authorities 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 23 

among which we cannot give any decided prefer- 
ence to one over another, 41 then we recognize that 
w r e have to do with something more than the mere 
chronological inaccuracy of an earty age, Accord- 
ing to these accounts, Homer's life falls anywhere 
within a period of more than four hundred years, 
and that during a time marked by the most exten- 
sive changes in the social condition of the Greeks 
on both sides of the Aegean Sea. For this variation 
in regard to the place and the time of Homer's life, 42 
the real historical significance has been determined 
by a recent investigation, in which one can hardly 
tell whether to admire most the self-evident sim- 
plicity of the main idea, or the merciless rigor of 
the historical argument. 43 It is this : Every state- 
ment as to time belongs to the tradition of a particu- 
lar locality. Thus the birth of Homer, according 
to the tradition of Smyrna, falls in the middle of the 
eleventh century ; according to that of Chios, about 
two generations later, or the beginning of the tenth 
century ; according to that of Samos, in the ninth 
century ; and so on. Also to the ninth century be- 
longed, according to Samian tradition and to He- 
rodotus, 44 the residence of Homer at Samos and the 



2i THE OPJGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

founding of the school of poets there ; whereas the 
latter event at Chios, according to Chian tradition, 
fell at the beginning of the tenth century. If, now, 
the name Homer, as has been shown, is made to 
bear all the epic poetry of the Trojan circle of 
myths ; if this Homer is reported as born at differ- 
ent points in the Greek world during a period of 
more than four centuries ; if in each instance there 
is connected with his birth or residence in a given 
locality the story of the rise of a school of epic 
poetry in the same locality, then for any one who 
does not allow himself to accept or to reject any 
of these facts by itself the conclusion is irresistible. 
The statements as to Homer's birth at different 
places and at different times are really statements 
as to the beginning of epic poetry in the several 
localities. The sequence of dates and places yields 
a history of the spread of such poetry over the 
western coast of Asia Minor and among the islands. 
The order in which Smyrna, Chios, Kolophon, and 
so on to the remote Kypros and Krete, arrange 
themselves according to the succession of the re- 
spective traditions of time, corresponds to the geo- 
graphical position or the political relations of the 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 2d 

several places, and so furnishes an unsought con- 
firmation of this theory. 45 

To these historical data in regard to the person 
of Homer let us now add the facts which are es- 
tablished as to the poems, without reference to the 
name of their author, 

The Iliad and Odyssey were not originally com- 
mitted to writing, but orally delivered. All the 
attacks made upon this proposition since Wolf 
first proved it have only served to establish its 
truth more firmly. 46 The poems themselves, by 
their form and contents, make it probable. No- 
where do we find in the narrative of the poems or 
in the numerous similes the slightest hint of the 
existence of the art of writing, not even where 
there was natural occasion for mention of it. 47 The 
language also, in its power of adapting itself to the 
metre by lengthening and shortening, separating 
and contracting, the vowels, shows a flexibility that 
is incomparably more natural for the spoken word 
than for the word fixed in a given form by writ- 
ing. 48 But the supposition that is thus made high- 
ly probable becomes certain from other considera- 
tions. In the eighth century before Christ, the Hi- 



26 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

ad was already a completed work, as appears from 
the fact that other epics composed at that time by 
the limitations of their own subject-matter recog- 
nize the limits of that of the Iliad as already set- 
tled. 49 It is not until a full century later that we 
find the first beginnings of the use among the 
Greeks of the art of writing, and then it is for the 
recording of laws. 50 But from the use of writing 
to record the brief formulas of ancient laws to the 
use of it for long poems is a progress involving so 
many indispensable steps as to require a very long 
time. Poems so long as the Iliad and the Odyssey 
— one 16,000, the other 12,000 lines — are not writ- 
ten down, so long as the habit of hearing them re- 
cited is universal and there is no hope of their 
finding readers. The preservation of these poems, 
by oral tradition only, for a couple of centuries, 
which in itself is not without a parallel in the his- 
tory of epic poetry, 51 is in this case the less surpris- 
ing by reason of the historical fact that there were 
schools of poets who made it their business to cul- 
tivate epic poetry, and to recite and transmit the 
heroic songs of their ancestors. 

The earliest well-authenticated case of the com- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 27 

mission of the Iliad and Odyssey to writing oc- 
curred at Athens in the latter half of the sixth 
century before Christ, when the work was done by 
a committee organized by Peisistratos. 52 That this 
was the first time that the whole of the poems was 
written down may be clearly inferred from the 
form and character of the numerous statements in 
regard to it. If it had been only a combination 
and connection of written copies previously exist- 
ing, it would never have been, as it now is, cele- 
brated as an important event, as the accomplish- 
ment of a difficult task. And surely the ordinance 
of Solon, before the time of Peisistratos, directing 
the succession in the delivery of the Homeric songs 
at the great Panathenaic festival at Athens would 
have taken a different form if he could have re- 
ferred to existing written copies. 

After Peisistratos, and more especially after the 
end of the fifth century before Christ, when the 
love of reading became more general, copies of the 
Iliad were multiplied. 53 Certain cities had their 
own copies, which were probably the local test of 
the accuracy of the festival declamations. Alex- 
ander the Great held his copy in great honor, and 



2S THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

set apart a jewelled casket from his Persian booty 
to keep it in. The form given to the poems under 
Peisistratos, when corrected of some errors that had 
subsequently crept in, was what the Alexandrian 
scholars of the third century before Christ aimed 
to restore, 54 and our modern editions strive to re- 
produce, as nearly as possible, the text as they de- 
termined it. 55 

Now let us take together in one view the points 
thus historically settled. The Iliad and Odyssey 
were orally circulated for two centuries before they 
were put into written form. The prevalent opin- 
ion among the Greeks in the classical time made 
Homer the author not only of the Iliad and Odys- 
sey, but the originator of all their epic poetry, or 
at least all that pertained to the Trojan circle of 
myths. The traditions in regard to his life give 
no story of an individual existence connected with 
a definite time and place, but assume the shape 
of items as to the gradual spread of epic poetry 
among those Greek cities and tribes which chiefly 
cultivated it. The question whether the Iliad and 
Odyssey proceeded from the spontaneous concep- 
tion of a single poet, or were formed by putting 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 29 

together the separate songs of one or of several 
poets, is not touched at all by these traditions, for 
either supposition is reconcilable with the histor- 
ical facts yielded by them. There is, however, 
one result gained by examining them, and that is, 
that the answer to this question is shown to be en- 
tirely apart from any supposed historical evidence. 
If any one is constrained, by arguments of another 
kind, to hold that the Homeric poems are not orig- 
inal units, but combinations of separate songs or 
enlargements of simpler poems, no one can charge 
him with, defying the testimony of a sure and well- 
defined tradition. The answer to the question be- 
tween original unity and subsequent combination 
can be sought only in the poems themselves. 

In the poems themselves. 56 That sounds very 
well as a theory, but in practical application it may 
be very likely to amount to leaving the decision to 
personal temperament and subjective inclination. 
We have just seen how men of the most cultivated 
judgment in the sphere of poetry, who undoubt- 
edly formed their opinion solely from the poems 
themselves, came to the most opposite conclusions. 
And, indeed, may it not be impossible to determine, 



30 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

in regard to poems of so remote an age, what degree 
of self-consistency they ought to have in order to 
prove their original unity? 57 Such considerations 
must certainly inspire us with caution, but the fact 
of differences of opinion ought not to make us de- 
spair of reaching a satisfactory conclusion by going 
to the bottom of the subject; and, on the other 
hand, in the case of poems as long as the Iliad and 
Odyssey, a comparison of their several parts as to 
subject and form furnishes a standard of consist- 
ency which restricts very narrowly the caprices of 
individual judgments. It will be my endeavor to 
show that, in virtue of these things, a tenable opin- 
ion can be formed, and has been in part already 
settled. Let us look first at the Iliad. 

The series of transactions and incidents which 
the Iliad presents to our imagination is so con- 
nected together as to be easily embraced in one 
view. It is the tenth year of the siege, and the 
Achaean army is still striving to overthrow Troy 
in revenge for the outrage committed by Paris. 
Then it happens that their bravest hero, Achilles, 
is wounded in his honor by Agamemnon, the lead- 
er of the host, and resolves to avenge himself for 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEEIG POEMS. 31 

the insult by keeping aloof from the battle-field. 
His goddess-mother, Thetis, asks and obtains from 
Zeus the promise that the Achaean army shall have 
disasters until Agamemnon repents and atones for 
the wto no; he has done. For a time the valor of 
the other Achaean chiefs maintains the balance 
against the Trojans, but presently they are at such 
a disadvantage that Agamemnon sends an embas- 
sy of the noblest chiefs to beg forgiveness of Achil- 
les and offer him full compensation. But his thirst 
for revenge is not yet satisfied ; the woes of the 
Greeks must be yet greater; the Trojans must 
force their way into the camp, begin to burn the 
ships, and thus threaten them with complete de- 
struction, ere he will lay aside his wrath and come 
forth from his retirement. The very next day 
brings matters to this extremity. The bravest of 
the Achaean leaders are wounded and forced to 
leave the field. Hektor breaks through the wall 
of the Greek camp, and the resistance of the mighty 
Ajax cannot prevent his setting fire to one of the 
ships. Then Patroklos, the trusty companion-in- 
arms of Achilles, beseeches him in this crisis of 
need, if he will not go out himself, at least to allow 



32 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEBIC POEMS. 

him and the host of the Myrmidons to take part in 
the battle. This only he consents to do. By the 
successes that attend his unexpected appearance on 
the field, Patroklos is so carried away that he for- 
gets the strict command of Achilles, and lets him- 
self be drawn on from defence of the camp to an 
attack upon the Trojan army. In pressing the at- 
tack he is slain, and it is only with great effort that 
his body, stripped of its armor, is rescued from the 
eager foe. At the dreadful news of his friend's 
death, Achilles, late on that day, comes forth, and 
b}^ his mere presence checks the renewed onset of 
the Trojans. The next morning Agamemnon gives 
Achilles a full compensation for the wrong done 
him, and Achilles, burning with desire to avenge 
the death of his beloved friend, dismisses his anger 
at Agamemnon. In the now r renewed conflict he 
takes his revenge. Many Trojans fall before him, 
and, last of all, Hektor, who alone dared to meet his 
attack, and who alone was the hope of the Trojan 
cause. The burial of Patroklos, the funeral games 
in his honor, the return of the body of Hektor to 
his aged father, and the lament of the Trojans over 
it, bring the poem to a close. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 33 

This hasty sketch will suffice to recall to any one 
acquainted with the Iliad the main outline of the 
poem. One cannot thus bring it up to mind with- 
out being impressed with the manifest interlink- 
ing of the parts, the restriction of the story with- 
in well-chosen limits, the grouping of the whole 
around a common centre. Bat in recent times 
the admiration of this poem has gone a step far- 
ther, and made the discovery that the whole Iliad is 
guided and controlled bv one fundamental thought, 
one leading idea, 58 which is thus stated : 

"The wrath of Achilles is fully justified and 
right, and the supreme Governor of the world 
himself assures to it its satisfaction ; but then the 
man's passion pushes his wrath, right as it is in 
itself, to an undue excess. When he rejects the 
offered reconciliation, Achilles makes himself lia- 
ble to punishment, and by the death of his dearest 
friend pays the penalty of his excessive wrath." 

Who would deny that the succession of actions 
and events presented in the Iliad is perfectly adapt- 
ed to convey this sound ethical doctrine? Who 
could fail to recognize that a sort of national in- 
stinct made due moderation a necessary condition, 

3 



34 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

in the view of the Greeks in all ages, of the high- 
est moral goodness and nobleness ? But the ques- 
tion is a very different one, whether in the Iliad 
as we have it and the ancients had it, be it one 
poem or a combination of originally diverse ele- 
ments — whether in this Iliad we find this idea set 
forth as the controlling idea, or anything to justify 
us in reading it between the lines ? To this ques- 
tion we must certainly answer, No. It is not from 
the consideration of justice that Zeus promises the 
fullest satisfaction to the wrath of Achilles, but he 
owes gratitude to Thetis for previous benefits, and 
Thetis makes these benefits tell so as to secure the 
assent of Zeus to her request. 59 The rejection by 
Achilles of the offers of friendship does not con- 
stitute a turning-point in the action of the poem. 
There is no subsequent reference to it, even where 
there is the strongest reason for one; 60 and Zeus, 
without the slightest hint of disapproval of the 
implacability of Achilles, maintains unaltered his 
promise to avenge him by the increasing woes of 
the Greeks. 61 In the death of Patroklos, no one of 
gods or men detects a penalty for the excessive 
wrath of Achilles. He falls by the attack of a deity 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 35 

friendly to the Trojans, and because he transgressed 
the strict command of Achilles as to the limits of 
his taking part in the contest. Thus we see that 
at every important point of the action not only do 
we fail to find that motive suggested which we 
ought to find on this theory, but another motive, 
essentially different and irreconcilable with that, is 
employed. In truth, one has to get away from the 
Iliad, and strive to forget what is really contained 
in it, before he can venture to impose upon the 
poem as it is a thought which might be the ruling 
thought of the whole. 

But, again, the most serious difficulties arise as 
to the mere continuity of connection in the narra- 
tive so soon as we descend from general outlines to 
particular details. So far as these depend on va- 
riation of tone and style, it is useless to try to give 
an idea of them. 62 They do not appear in the Ger- 
man translation, which, excellent as it is, spreads a 
uniform tone over the whole. So, also, of other 
grounds of suspicion, although as depending on 
the subject-matter they must appear in any ver- 
sion, yet one can hardly give an idea of their nnm- 
ber and the way they are inwrought in the whole 



36 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

structure of the poem without going minutely 
through the whole. Still, perhaps, in some exam- 
ples the kind of doubt they raise may be so far in- 
dicated as to show whether they are such as to jus- 
tify positive inferences. Such cases as this, that 
the same warrior is killed on different days by dif- 
ferent foes, may be regarded as of little conse- 
quence. 62 They occur only in regard to inferior 
persons, and such contradictions in a long poem 
may be explained by failure of memory, even on 
the supposition of single authorship. But other 
things go deeper into the course of the main inci- 
dents. The larger part of the Iliad is taken up 
with the particular narrative of the events of three 
days of conflict. The first, favorable throughout 
to the Greek army without the help of Achilles, 
extends from the second book nearly to the end of 
the seventh ; the second day, which contains the 
extreme peril of the Greeks, the exploits and death 
of Patroklos, and finally the sudden appearance of 
Achilles on the field, begins in the eleventh and 
ends in the eighteenth book; the third, containing 
the vengeance of Achilles and the death of Hek- 
tor, covers books xx, xxi, and xxii. If now we 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 37 

undertake to make clear to ourselves the incidents 
of the second and most important day, we stumble 
at everv step against the greatest difficulties. The 
narrative goes quickly over the beginning of the 
conflict. After only eighty lines we are told that 
so long as the sun was ascending the fortune of 
the battle was undecided, but that from mid-day 
on the scale was turned. And then, after we have 
followed through five books the most varied shift- 
ings of the contest, and have been told of incidents 
requiring considerable time — the battle about the 
wall of the Greek camp, and the storming of its 
gate against vigorous defence ; the help given by 
Poseidon to the Greeks; Hera's preparations for a 
trick upon Zeus, and her success in beguiling him 
to sleep, in order that Poseidon may work on unin- 
terrupted; the awakening of Zeus, and the help he 
sends to the Trojans; the turning of their retreat 
into an attack; the struggle around the ship of 
Ajax ; the appeal of Patroklos to Achilles for leave 
to rescue the Greeks ; the arming of Patroklos and 
the Myrmidons, and a large part of the exploits of 
Patroklos — after all this has been told, in more 
than 4000 lines, then we hear again that it is 



38 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

mid-day and the sun standing high in heaven. 64 
"We may, if we please, cut out ever so much of 
what lies between these two statements, as being a 
subsequent enlargement of a skilfully constructed 
original narrative. Bat we gain nothing by that; 
for, in any case, the development of the struggle 
which causes the appearance of Patroklos, and a 
great part of his achievements, have no time allowed 
for them, for they occur between two distinct indi- 
cations of the same hour. In another point of 
view, tlie^e is a difficulty as to the appearance of 
Patroklos on the field. When the battle is turning 
against the Greeks in the eleventh book, Patro- 
klos is sent out by Achilles to learn the name of 
a wounded man whom they see Nestor carrying 
away in his chariot. Patroklos is in such a hurry 
to perform the command of his impatient chief 
that he refuses to sit down in Nestor's tent. But 
this haste is forgotten ; for while the Greek wall is 
stormed by Hektor, and while the fortunes of war 
are changing back and forth through four long 
books, Patroklos remains seated in quiet conversa- 
tion in the tent of a Greek chieftain. 65 Kay, more 
than this, when he finally, in the sixteenth book, re- 



THE OEIGIX OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 39 

turns to Achilles, not a word is said of an answer to 
the question of Achilles, nor, indeed, of Lis having 
been sent on the errand. 66 Similar discrepancies 
we find in the course of the whole narrative, lively 
and vivid as it is in the details. In closely con- 
nected passages we find different representations of 
the condition of the battle, of its form, of its local- 
ity. 67 The entrance of the same person, Poseidon, 
at the same time into the conflict is twice described, 
and in ways irreconcilable with each other. 63 Zeus 
utters on the same day two incompatible prophe- 
cies of the immediate future. 69 As to the death of 
one hero, Patroklos, we receive two inconsistent 
accounts in close connection. 70 As we read, we are 
carried along by the naturalness and vigor of the 
successive pictures, but the effort to hold one con- 
tinuous thread through them, to grasp a unity in 
the narrative, such as it must have even if only re- 
cited, so that the hearers should understand and 
see the incidents in imagination — this effort fails 
utterly. We find ourselves in a mighty concourse 
of tumultuous waves, where it is impossible to stand 
firmly. 71 

Very different is the impression made by the 



40 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

story of the first day of conflict in books ii-vii. 
There, with very slight exceptions, we enjoy the 
clear light of a transparent narrative. What read- 
er of the Iliad would not recall with lively admi- 
ration the charming passage of the view from the 
walls of Troy, with its happy delineations of Hel- 
en, Priam, and the Greek heroes; the exquisite de- 
scription of the shooting of the arrow of Panda- 
ros, the beauty of which Lessing has so clearly 
analyzed ; 72 the splendid story of the exploits of 
Diomedes, and then the peaceful episode between 
him and Glaukos, who meet as foes, but recognize 
each other as connected by hereditary ties of hos- 
pitality, and separate with mutual gifts ; finally, 
the parting of Hektor and Andromache, a scene 
often imitated, but not easily surpassed in the 
touching power of its simple naturalness ? But 
the beauty of these separate scenes, which makes 
it hard to tell which one is the most delightful, is 
quite equalled by the difficulty of combining them 
into one story. 73 The mass of the incidents threat- 
ens at the very outset to overwhelm us, when Ave 
recollect that they are to be supposed to occur 
within a single day; and then we find it, in almost 



THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMEKIC POEMS. 41 

every case, impossible to discover the internal link 
between any two of them. We have a stately pict- 
ure of the arming of the Greek host, and then a 
roster of the whole Greek force down to the minor 
chiefs, occupying some 400 lines. Everything indi- 
cates the beginning of a grand general conflict, and 
then follows — a truce, and a single combat between 
Paris and Menelaos. 74 The agreement, sanctioned 
by a sacrifice and solemnly sealed by oaths, that if 
Menalaos is victor in this duel, Helen and the treas- 
ure taken with her shall be given up, is wantonly 
broken by the Trojans ; and on the same day, with 
the slightest possible reference to that former duel, 
Hektor challenges any of the Greek chiefs to a 
second one, without proposing that it shall decide 
so much. Still the Greeks accept his challenge, 
and utter no reproaches over the former breach 
of faith. Moreover, on the very day on which the 
previous duel has resulted in favor of their cham- 
pion, and on which, too, the general contest has 
brought the Trojans into extreme distress, the 
bravest Greek chiefs dread to enter this single 
combat, and have to be aroused from their conster- 
nation by Nestor's reproaches. 75 Even Diomedes, 



42 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

'who on that very day lias undertaken and trium- 
phantly carried on a combat with Ares himself, is 
now among the terror-stricken. It is true, his cour- 
age has already before this, in some unexplained 
way, abandoned him. Immediately after he has, 
with valor inspired by Athene, vanquished and driv- 
en from the field Aphrodite and Ares, we find him 
meeting Glaukos, whom lie does not know, and ask- 
ing with pious anxiety whether it may not be a god 
who confronts him, for with gods a mortal must 
not venture to contend. 76 

But I will not 2:0 on with the list of such contra- 
dictions, tempting as is the abundance of material. 
It is impossible to fairly present here the number 
of difficulties which arise in the two parts of the 
Iliad of which I have spoken, which make up about 
a half of the whole poem. My only purpose has 
been to bring to your view, by some easily pre- 
sented examples, the character and importance of 
them. Whoever wishes a confirmation from with- 
out of the gravity of these inconsistencies should 
seek it, not in the writings of those who have con- 
vincingly set them forth, 77 but rather in those of 
their adversaries, who, in order to maintain the 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 43 

unity of the Iliad, labor to invalidate the grounds 
of suspicion. 78 The devices of interpretation and 
involved hypotheses by which they seek to seem to 
reconcile irreconcilable contradictions/ 9 form the 
strongest proof of the reasonableness of the doubts 
as to the original unity of the poem, and justify 
the simple inference drawn from them. When a 
poem like the Iliad presents, sometimes through 
two hundred lines, and sometimes through nearly 
a thousand, one scene and set of characters with 
strict consistency, even in the minutest details of 
the vivid delineations, and then in the very next 
lines passes on to the assumption of a different 
scene and a different disposition in the actors — 
when this kind of inconsistency, varying in degree, 
runs through the whole poem, and everywhere 
shows itself, not within single narrations, but only 
in the combination of these into one whole; 80 in 
such a case we find ourselves compelled to con- 
clude that those single narratives were originally 
separate, and that the combining of them was a 
subsequent process. The narrative of Diomede c ' 
conversation with Glaukos is, in its way, as admira- 
ble as that of his exploits in war, but as a continu- 



44 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

ation of these it cannot have belonged to the ori^- 
inal conception and composition of the poem. 
Hektor's challenge to a single combat, the dread 
of the Greek chiefs to en^a^e with him, the bravest 
of the Trojans, Nestor's reproaches and exhorta- 
tions — all this is very well told ; but as a scene of 
the same dav on which the Greeks had been cheat- 
ed out of the stakes of another single combat (a 
day, too, in which they are everywhere successful 
in battle), such a representation is impossible. 

Facts of this kind speak so plainly that we can- 
not be deaf to them, and attention to them has al- 
ready brought about agreement on certain points 
between the two parties to this discussion. No 
one who really understands the questions at issue 
believes any longer in the original independent ex- 
istence of a poet, called Homer, if you please, who 
wrought up the myths of his people into the Iliad. 81 
It is admitted by the most decided and most prom- 
inent champions of the theory of single authorship 
that the composer of the Iliad had before him sep- 
arate songs of earlier origin, that he took them up 
into his comprehensive poem without material al- 
terations, and that the contradictions — or, to use a 



THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 45 

milder term, inequalities — which we discover pro- 
ceed from this adoption and combination of earlier 
songs. 82 The difference of opinion is limited now 
substantially to these points : that the defenders of 
the unity of the Iliad assert the impossibility of sep- 
arating it into the originally independent parts; 83 
that they restrict as much as they can the amount 
of such incorporations in proportion to the rest of 
the Iliad ; and that they find the true value of the 
Iliad to lie, not in the poetic beauty of single lays, 
but in the majestic composition of the whole poem. 
As to the first point, there is hardly room for much 
dispute; for the real question is not whether it is 
possible in all, or even in a few, cases to mark off 
the originally separate songs, but whether the pres- 
ent form of the poem has grown out of such ele- 
ments without essential alteration of them ; and on 
this point there is agreement within certain limits. 
As to the relative extent of the incorporated ele- 
ments and of the new independently composed 
Iliad, the field of controversy will be narrowed by 
the further investigation of particular cases. The 
third question, whether the value and significance 
of the Iliad is to be seen in the poetry of single 



40 THE OEIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

scenes or in the grand composition of the whole, 
might be left untouched so far as it is not answered 
in what has already been said. But it may be al- 
lowable, without undue influence from one's per- 
sonal opinions, to suggest two considerations which 
may prepare the way for a decision. The compo- 
sition of extended and elaborately constructed epic 
poems, in contrast with single songs containing 
each the story of a single adventure, marks un- 
questionably a great progress in poetic literature. 84 
If, now, the Iliad was, as seems most probable, the 
earliest composition of such extent in the Greek 
epic poetry, then, even if it is almost wholly a mere 
patchwork of previously existing separate materi- 
als, still a high position in the development of the 
Greek epic is due to such a work of compilation. 
But it is a very different question whether in this 
poem, as we now have it, the chief value lies in the 
original elements or in the architectural skill which 
has made them into one whole. On this question 
let one simple fact be considered. The contradic- 
tions in the Iliad are so manifest and so absolute 
that when once pointed out they cannot be ignored, 
however one may strive to make them appear tri- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 47 

fling. But if thousands of readers, from antiquity 
to the present time, have felt the elevating and in- 
spiring influence of the Homeric poems without 
noticing the contradictions, it would surely be a 

great mistake to ascribe this surprising fact to a 
universal carelessness in reading. "We should rath- 
er explain it by the overpowering charm of the 
separate pictures, which draw off the attention 
from their connection with one another. Goethe's 
praises of Homer, Lessing's luminous deductions 
from him, all have reference to the separate nar- 
ratives, and remain true — yes, even gain in truth, 
when we believe that we have not one continuous 
narrative, but some eighteen or twenty separate 
epic songs arranged together according to the gen- 
eral course of the incidents. 

TTe have thus far turned our attention exclu- 
sively to the Iliad ; let us now in brief space con- 
sider the Odyssey. TTe might grant that the 
Odyssey must be recognized as originating in a 
single poetic conception, excluding altogether the 
supposition that it was made up of originally sep- 
arate materials, without thereby casting a doubt 
upon what has been more or less certainly deter- 



48 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

mined with regard to the origin of the Iliad. It 
is quite possible that the two poems which now 
are inseparably united in our eyes, and which all 
antiquity, too, referred to the one all-including 
name of Homer, may have differed essentially in 
their real origin. Whether this is really the case 
is a question on which the conflict of opinion is 
not at present narrowed down to so small a field 
as in regard to the Iliad. The examination of the 
Odyssey from this point of view began later than 
that of the Iliad, 85 and so we find within the last 
few decades scholars who decidedly rejected the 
belief in the single authorship of the Iliad and yet 
as decidedly maintained a belief in that of the 
Odyssey. 86 The investigations which questioned or 
disproved the original unity of the Odyssey were 
mainly confined for a long time to single parts of 
the poem, and were conducted on the silent as- 
sumption that the process of construction in the 
two poems was essentially the same. 87 Under these 
circumstances, it is easy to see that one cannot, in 
the case of the Odyssey, mark out with the same 
prospect of assent the limits within which opin- 
ions are now agreed, and I may be excused if I 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 49 

confine myself to a statement of a few principal 
points of view. 

The arguments for original unity of authorship 
in the Odyssey are not only the well-judged lim- 
itation of the material and the grouping of its 
manifold incidents about a single central point, 
but also the skilful complication of the story. The 
abundance and variety of the stories of Odysseus' 
adventures on the return from Troy, and in con- 
flict with the foes in his own home, are constantly 
focused upon one thing — the character of the hero. 
His courage and his cautious judgment are not to 
be broken down by the dangers of the long voyage, 
nor yet by the terrors of conflicts with giants and 
with supernatural powers. Neither the allure- 
ments of comfort, nor the charms of beautiful god- 
desses, nor the loveliness of the maiden who saves 
his life, can overpower his longing for home and 
faithful affection for his wife. And a like spirit 
in that wife, joined with courage and cunning, has 
meanwhile, in conflict with hardly less dangerous 
enemies, kept safe the home into which, after all 
his toils and struggles, he is to enter for a new 
lease of happiness. The copious details which fill 

4 



50 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

up this outline are not recited in simple chrono- 
logical order ; but the opening of the poem shows 
us the wanderings of Odysseus nearly at their end, 
while the previous incidents, instead of being told 
by the poet, are, far more effectively, put into the 
mouth of the hero himself at the time when lie, 
welcomed and entertained by the Phaeakians, is 
thereby assured of a return to his home. Two, or 
rather three, threads of narrative — the occurrences 
in the house of Odysseus, the journey of Telema- 
chos to visit his father's companions-in-arms, and 
the wanderings of Odysseus — are carried on at first 
independently side by side, and then are united 
w T hen the father and son, almost at the same mo- 
ment, return to Ithaka, and win their victory over 
the enemy at home. That this skilful arrange- 
ment is the result of matured reflection, and marks 
by its complication a higher stage of art in con- 
struction than the straightforward course of the 
Iliad, must be admitted without hesitation; but 
this by no means decides — does not, in fact, even 
touch — the question whether the Odyssey, in its 
present form, was originally conceived as a single 
poem, or is either a careful combination of ele- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 51 

ments not originally designed for such union, or 
the expansion of a nucleus originally much sim- 
pler. But against the supposition of original uni- 
ty of conception in the Odyssey as we have it, in- 
superable objections arise. In the first place, in 
order to find in the particulars above mentioned a 
proof of the original unity of the poem, it is nec- 
essary to apply them in the most general and ab- 
stract way to the actual details of our Odyssey. 88 
The alleged connection of all the numerous inci- 
dents with the one person Odysseus cannot, surely, 
be held strictly true of those in the third and 
fourth books ; for the real subject of those books is 
the adventures of other heroes on the return from 
Troy, which have no natural connection with his. 89 
The character of Odysseus certainly might be so 
presented throughout the whole poem as it has 
been sketched above ; but, in fact, we find this true 
only in the first half of the poem, while in the 
second half it is exaggerated on both sides almost 
to the point of caricature. On the one hand, the 
wise self-control of the hero degenerates, when he 
appears in his own house cunningly disguised as a 
beggar, almost to vulgar buffoonery; 90 and, on the 



52 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

other, such valor as enables him alone to engage 
with more than a hundred able-bodied men, skilled 
in war, without even the help of a deity to make 
it credible, oversteps the limit of moderation which 
is observed in the earlier part of the narrative. 91 
An artful complication of different threads of nar- 
rative is certainly characteristic of the Odyssey ; 
but not less characteristic is it that just this pecu- 
liarity of construction involves ns in unexplained, 
indeed for the most part inexplicable, difficulties. 
The incidents of the return of Odysseus are, indeed, 
interwoven with those of the vovage of Telema- 
chos; but, on closer study, admiration of this plot 
is more than shaken. For the journey of Telema- 
chos is not only altogether without influence on the 
main action, but is undertaken in the beginning 
without motive and prolonged without reason. 92 
One cannot avoid the thought that it is introduced 
only in order to attach to the adventures of Odys- 
seus a sketch of those of some other heroes. And, 
more than all, the very points of contact of the 
combined narratives, those places on which the de- 
fence of original unity must lay special stress, 
bring us every time into undeniable inconsisten- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 53 

cies. In passing from the Telemachos story to the 
Odysseus story, at the beginning of the fifth book, 
we find a council of the gods which is irreconcila- 
ble in the subject of its dealing with that of the 
first book ; and the lines in which it is described 
are plainly a clumsy patchwork, made up from 
other passages of the poem. 93 Again, when we re- 
turn, in the fifteenth book, from the story of Odys- 
seus' arrival in Ithaka to that of Telemachos, the 
goddess Athene comes in to help out the transi- 
tion. Athene has been aiding Odysseus by word 
and deed since his arrival on the island, and she 
goes to Lakedaemon to stir up Telemachos to 
return home. But she leaves Odysseus long af- 
ter daybreak, and arrives in Lakedaemon on the 
same day before dawn ! Both marks of time are 
clearly given, and each is essential to the whole 
course of the narrative in which it stands, so that 
the contradiction is plain and admitted. 94 Such 
an inconsistency is not conceivable in an original 
creation ; but we understand it when we recognize 
here an artificial union of poems which, as already 
familiar and cherished, were brought into their 
new relation with the least possible change. 



5-i THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

The supposition of original unity in the poem is 
upset, in the second place, by the consideration 
that there is want of harmony between different 
parts of the Odyssey as to certain fundamental 
matters which must have been fully present to the 
consciousness of the poet. For example, as to the 
deity to whose wrath the extraordinary woes of 
Odysseus are to be ascribed; 95 as to the proximate 
number of the suitors of Penelope 96 and the time 
during which their wild doings had gone on; 97 as 
to their offering; or not offering the customary 
marriage presents; 98 as to the personal appearance 
of the hero himself; 99 as to the age of Telema- 
chos; 100 as to the design against his life formed 
by the suitors ; 101 as to the namo of a person in the 
household of Odysseus who was of no little conse- 
quence to the action of the story 102 — in these and 
other points we find unmistakable contradictions 
which cannot be smoothed over or eliminated. 

Thirdly and finally, we observe in the tone and 
poetic quality of the narrative a variation which 
cannot escape notice even in the disguise of a 
translation. Let one read in immediate sequence 
the sixth book, for example (the meeting with 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 55 

Nausikaa), and the twentieth (the incidents pre- 
ceding the fatal catastrophe), and he may safely 
offer a reward for any person who shall be able to 
attribute to the same poet the transparent clear- 
ness of the former and the helpless confusion of 
the latter. 103 There is, moreover, one peculiarity of 
the Odyssey which makes it very difficult to decide 
how T far the poem is made up of originally inde- 
pendent constituents, and how far it has merely 
been expanded by additions to an original whole, 
and that peculiarity is the repetition of essential- 
ly the same mythical matter in various forms, or 
what may be called twin narratives — a peculiarity 
which can hardly be paralleled from the Iliad, but 
is a characteristic feature of the last two thirds of 
the Odyssey. Thus we find in the adventures of 
Odysseus the two solitary divinities, Kirke and Ka- 
lypso ; the two mysterious helpers of his voyage, 
Aiolos and Alkinoos ; the two similar prophecies 
from Kirke and Teiresias ; the fatal sleep of Odys- 
seus twice repeated. 104 And so it is constantly after 
the arrival of Odysseus in Ithaka. The story of his 
coming into his own house unrecognized, in the 
disguise of a beggar, and having a bone or a foot- 



56 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

stool thrown at him by the revellers who are eating 
up his substance, striking enough once, is repeated 
three times with slight variations; 105 four times the 
sagacity of the clogs is impressed upon us ; 106 four 
times we have fictitious accounts of himself and 
his history given by Odysseus, similar to one an- 
other, and yet not the same even in the principal 
features, although some of the same persons are 
present to hear them. 107 The quiet slumbers of 
Penelope in the upper room at all times in the 
day, 108 the inexhaustible capacity of Odysseus for 
eating and begging, 109 the accumulation of similar 
omens, 110 as if all Olympos were incessantly busy 
about the house of Odysseus — in a word, the mul- 
titude of difficulties, no single one of which can be 
satisfactorily cleared up unless all are, is so great 
as to discourage even an indefatigable student. 111 
To have undertaken the investigation in its full 
scope, and to have carried it on with a keenness 
of judgment and a rigorous acceptance of truth 
which enabled him to reach as positive results for 
an understanding of the formation of the Odyssey 
as Lachmann did for the Iliad — this is the undis- 
puted honor of A. Kirchhoff. 112 It w r ould perhaps 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 57 

he premature to indicate now, in regard to the 
Odyssey as in regard to the Iliad, within what 
limits the traditional assumption of original unity 
must confine its opposition to these views; but 
still one may be allowed to point out some things 
which seem to be settled with entire certainty by 
KirchhofFs investigations. The idea of original 
unity of construction in the Odyssey as we have it 
is not merely disturbed, but so completely set aside 
that scarcely the shadow of it can maintain itself. 
On the contrary, the poem has been systematically 
worked over by an editor with intelligent design 
and some degree of poetic power, who incorpo- 
rated into the originally more simple nucleus bor- 
rowed matter of kindred mythical tenor and addi- 
tions of his composition. And even that original 
nucleus which we must assume, the earliest nar- 
rative of the adventures and return of Odysseus, 
is not a simple song like those which we assume 
as making up the Iliad, but belongs to the period 
in which the epic poem as a form of art was being 
developed. But the expanded edition of its pres- 
ent form belongs to the time when the decay of 
the Greek epic had already begun, when mean- 



58 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. 

ingless breadth of narration, conveyed in the tra- 
ditional forms of language and metre, served as a 
substitute for the freshness and vivid reality of 
true poetry. If, indeed, we lose anything of real 
value when we are obliged to give up the fond 
belief in a divine singer who gave forth the Iliad 
in his youth and the Odyssey in his old age, still 
we have gained something of much more impor- 
tance in its stead ; for these two poems have be- 
come for us, without suffering thereby harm or 
loss in their intrinsic value, reliable witnesses to 
the progressive growth of Greek epic poetry. The 
comparison to the rising and setting sun with 
which antiquity glorified the individual Homer as 
author of these two poems, we may adopt in an 
altered sense and apply to the poems themselves 
as representatives of the stages of that poetic de- 
velopment. 

I have now endeavored to fulfil the task which 
I proposed to myself in the beginning, to set forth 
the reasonableness of raising the question as to the 
origin of the Homeric poems, to suggest the means 
for its solution, and to indicate the limits within 
which the points in dispute are by this time re- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 59 

stricted. It may justly be demanded that I should 
bring together the positive conclusions, less mani- 
fest in themselves, which result from these nega- 
tive considerations, and thereby present a view in 
outline of the history of the formation of these 
two poems. To such an attempt a few words may 
be devoted in closing. 113 

As in the case of all peoples where it is possible 
to trace the course of poetic development up to its 
beginnings, 114 so in the Greek tribes, epic song ap- 
pears as the earliest form of poetry. Its subject- 
matter is the legendary lore of the tribe and the 
people. Legend differs from history, not merely 
in beino; less certain and trustworthy because it 
depends solely on oral tradition, but also in that it 
gives a prominence to particular events and per- 
sonages as the most perfect expression of the char- 
acter of the people and shining types of what it 
wishes to be and to do. 115 Even written history does 
not exclude the growing-up of legend concerning 
the very same time — e. g., as to Charlemagne, as to 
the Crusades — if certain characters and events 
take hold of and inspire a whole people in its in- 
most being. Such a subject of uplifting and glo- 



60 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

rious remembrance the Greek tribes had in the 
loner contest which thev carried on against kindred 
tribes on the coast of Asia Minor, the Trojan war. 
The heroic deeds of that conflict, the adventures 
of the heroes on their return, every one would 
wish to have recalled to memory on festival oc- 
casions in the happy enjoyment of quiet days. 116 
Therefore the palace of a prince in the heroic 
time could not do without the bard to recite in 
verse, accompanied by the simple chords of the 
lvre, the fame of those heroes. High in honor at 
home and abroad was the man on whom the gods 
had bestowed the gift of song. 117 Mneme, Melete, 
Aoide — that is, Memory, Meditation, Song — are the 
characteristic names, dating from the earliest time, 
of the muses from whom this gift came. 118 For the 
singers merit did not consist in his creative orig- 
inality, but people wanted to hear from him that 
which they already knew, and they wanted, to hear 
it because they knew it and delighted in it. "The 
individual poet," to use the happy language of an 
honored scholar of our own time, 119 " influences the 
natural growth of legend in much the same way 
as a skilful gardener regulates and guides the nat- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 61 

ural growth of his plants.*' The bard brings the 
legendary heroes clearly before our perception, and 
that in rhythmical form, which is grateful to the 
hearers and at the same time aids his own memo- 
ry. There is no marked difference between de- 
livering songs which he himself has first put into 
shape and repeating those of other poets which 
have Avon the applause of their hearers. The song 
contains a single event which is limited within 
moderate compass and so can be taken in at one 
view. Such is the representation which the Ho- 
meric poems themselves give us of the bard in the 
period to which their story refers. The lay of 
Ares and Aphrodite, which is put in the Odyssey 
into the mouth of the Phaeakian bard, takes up no 
more than a hundred lines. It would be rash to 
seek to determine the average length of the earli- 
est epic lays from tin's example, 1 - which, by the 
way, is beyond question an interpolation, but that 
each song covered but one single incident — e. g., 
the building of the wooden horse — and was of 
limited extent, is proved by the other instances of 
heroic songs and by the manner of their use; for 
the listening to the bard is only one of several 



62 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

social pleasures during or after a feast, and is al- 
ternated with other amusements. The bard had 
no need of long introductions to make the spe- 
cial narrative intelligible to his audience ; they 
were already familiar with the legend at every 
point. 

The period of the emigration of the Aeolic and 
Ionic tribes to Asia Minor was especially fitted to 
stimulate recollection of the heroic deeds of the 
Trojan war, for then a similar conflict had to be 
carried on in the same or neighboring localities, 
and so the remembrance of the past acted as an 
encouragement for the present. It is therefore 
significant that the earliest date 121 assigned for the 
lifetime of Homer makes him contemporary with 
the Ionic migration. In the Ionian colonies, which 
soon succeeded in establishing themselves, poetry 
was cultivated by schools of bards, and, as a prob- 
able consequence of the rise of these schools at in- 
tervals during the next four centuries, we find dif- 
ferent dates given for the birth of Homer in dif- 
ferent cities. The existence of these schools of 
poetry explains the preservation of heroic songs 
when once composed, and it also furnished the 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 63 

natural transition to the next stage in the develop- 
ment of epic poetry. 

The prosperous growth of individual Greek cit- 
ies of Asia Minor and their active intercourse with 
one another gave opportunity for regularly recur- 
ring festivals, at which great assemblies of people 
gave themselves up for considerable time to re- 
fined enjoyments at their leisure. One important 
element of the festivities was the delivery of epic 
songs, and that no longer by a single poet or rhap- 
sode, but by several in succession in mutual rival- 
ry. 1 " 22 What, then, could be more natural than that, 
when longer time was given for the recital, and 
the demands of the audiences gradually became 
more exacting, the single son^s should be arranged 
together in the order which their subjects indi- 
cated ? Such combination would be facilitated by 
the fact that the legends naturally grew up around 
certain fixed central points of myth, and the al- 
ready settled popularity of the old songs would 
insure their being taken up into the new connec- 
tion with as little change as possible. That the 
change of a few lines and the addition of a few 
would be enough to combine these originally inde- 



G4 THE ORIGIN OF THE II0MEEIC POEMS. 

pendent elements, the separate hero-songs, into a 
long epic, seems proved by the successful attempt 
of a modern German poet to unite into such a 
form a part of the detached folk-songs of the Ser- 
vians, 123 as well as by the combination into a single 
epic of the Finnish folk-songs, which still exist 
separately, side by side with the epic, and number 
more than 22,000 lines. It is evident, too, that in 
the historical development of epic poetry this 
process has actually occurred several times, for, 
even if the method of formation of the German 
national epic, the Nibelungenlied, is still an open 
question, there is an undoubted instance in the old 
French poem of the battle of Roncesvalles. 124 Now, 
in what progressive steps this combination, by re- 
writing some lines and adding others, took place 
in the case of the Greek heroic songs of the wrath 
of Achilles and the return of Odysseus, can hardly 
be ascertained with complete definiteness ; but the 
poems themselves, as we have them, show us not 
only that some such process took place, but also 
that there is a marked difference between the two 
poems in the elements which may be recognized 
in them, in the method of their development, and 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. bO 

in the time when they were completed. The Il- 
iad, in most of its extent enables us to recognize 
the separate lavs, sometimes united by mere juxta- 
position, sometimes more skilfully dovetailed into 
one another, and then it brings its subject to a 
close with poetry of a later date which already 
shows signs of decay in freshness and vigor. 1 ' 25 In 
the Odyssey, the simplest element, recognizable as 
such by the style itself, belongs to an age in which 
epic poetry was entering upon more comprehen- 
sive composition ; the continuation of it and the 
editors work which expands, dilutes, and rounds 
off the story, belong to the time of the decline of 
epic poetry. It is not necessary to suppose that 
the earlier songs disappeared at once when this 
combining or final editing work was done ; fur- 
thermore, it is quite probable, in the nature of 
things, that frequently single passages of the com- 
posite epic were separately recited, for only in ex- 
traordinary festivals would there be time for the 
delivery of the whole. 1 - 6 When Solon fixed by law 
the order of the recitation of the Homeric poems 
for the great Athenian festival, 1 - 7 he took the first 
step in the preservation of the completed form. 

5 



66 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

The arrangements of Peisistratos for committing 
them to writing were the second step, and to that 
we owe their preservation to our time. 

This which I have given is but an outline of 
the history of the origin of the Homeric poems, a 
mere sketch which needs to be filled out at numer- 
ous points. Some points must always remain not 
filled out; others the progress of investigation w x ill 
supply, and so gradually circumscribe the region 
of the unknown, provided the same principles be 
observed which prevail in the philological science 
of to-day. These principles are, first, a conscien- 
tious upholding of the real tradition of antiquity 
— for the Homeric investigations since Wolf's day 
have not abandoned the traditions of antiquity, 
but rather have at last re-established a consistent 
connection with them ; second, an indefatigable in- 
vestigation of the most isolated and minute par- 
ticulars, for it is just as true of philology as it 
is of physical science, that no matter of investiga- 
tion can be called trifling, but everything may be 
important in its relations ; third, an extension of 
one's view over the entire literature of the nation 
immediately concerned, and over kindred phenom- 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMEEIC POEMS. 07 

ena in other nations. 128 These are the means by 
which the philology of to-day endeavors to present 
to our mental view classical antiquity in its true 
form, and in the Homeric investigations we may 
clearly recognize the application of these means. 
Whatever near approach to historic truth has been 
attained in the field of the Homeric question has 
been due, not to the accident of happy suggestions, 
but to rigorous method, to unwearied investiga- 
tion, to absolute devotion to the subject. 



NOTES. 



1 Herod. II. 53. Further instances in Bernhardy, Grie- 
chische Literatur-Geschichte, 2d ed. I. p. 251 ; Sengebusch, 
Horuerica dissertatio I. p. 91. 

2 Numerous comparisons of this kind in Lauer, Gesch. 
der Horn. Poesie, p. 59. 

3 Athen. VIII. 39. 

4 Sengebusch, Horn. diss. I. p. 171. 

5 Sengebusch, I. pp. 139-166. For the principles on 
which Thucydides used the Homeric poems for inferences 
as to the historical facts of the earliest times, see Roscher, 
Leben, Werk u. Zeitalter des Thukydides, p. 132 sqq. 

6 So Xenophanes in Sext. Emp. adv. Math. IX. 193; I. 
289 ; Plat. Rep. II. 377 D sqq. 

7 E. g., Plat. Theaet. 180 D ; Arist. de an. III. 427 a, 25 ; 
with Trendelenburg's note, p. 449. 

8 Val. Max. 3, 7. Cf. Lessings Laokoon, XXIL 

9 Lycurg. adv. Leocr. § 102; Diog. Laert. I. 57. On the 
latter passage, Sengebusch, Horn. diss. II. p. 107 sq.; Lehrs, 
Rhein. Mus. N. F. XVII. p. 491 sqq. 

10 Plat, Protag. 325 E ; Isoc. Paneg. § 159 ; Hermann, 
Grieeh. Antiq. III. § 35, 6 sq. 

11 Xen. Conv. 3, 5. 

12 As to Plato, for example, see the proof in Sengebusch, 
I. p. 121 sqq. The long list of Homeric lines quoted or re- 



70 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC FOEMS. 

ferred to in the writings of Aristotle and those attributed 
to him is given in the Index Aristotelicus under "O^poQ. 
Those of the Odyssey are not half so numerous as those 
of the Iliad. It would be interesting to determine in the 
whole range of Greek literature the number of references 
to the Iliad and to the Odyssey respectively. 

13 On this whole subject of the influence of Homer on 
the Greeks, see Lehrs, De Arist. stud. Horn. pp. 200-229 ; 
Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, pp. 5-58 ; the greater part 
of Sengebusch, Horn. diss. I. ; Bergk, Griech. Lit. I. pp. 874- 
882. 

14 Information as to the principal translations into Latin, 
French, Italian, English, and German, is given in Bernhar- 
dy, Griech. Lit. 2d ed. II. 1, p. 175 sq. 

15 Scarcely any book has done so much to further a real 
insight into the character and special excellence of the 
Homeric poetry as Lessing's Laokoon. A large part of 
the numerous subsequent treatises on the subject is based 
on his clear and simple remarks. One among these, W. 
Wackernagel's "Die Epische Poesie" (Schweiz. Museum fur 
histor. Wissenschaften, vol. i. and ii.), deserves special men- 
tion for breadth of view, thoughtful penetration, and mas- 
terly clearness. 

16 Italienische Reise, II. [I am so doubtful of the transla- 
tion here that I subjoin the original. — Tr.] : " Homer stellt 
die Existenz dar, wir gewohnlich den Effect: er schildert 
das Furchterliche, wir furchterlich, er das Angenehme, wir 
angenehm." 

17 Briefwechsel mit Schiller, No. 424. 

18 Instances in Lauer, Gesch. der Horn. Poesie, p. 59 sq. 

19 Prolegomena ad Homerum, sive de operum Homeri- 
corum prisca et genuina forma variisque mutationibus et 



NOTES 13-26. 71 

probabili ratione einendandi — Scripsit Fried. Aug. Wolfius, 
vol. i. (no second volume was published), 1795. New edi- 
tion, 1859. For earlier suggestions of the idea which 
"Wolf was the first to establish by proof, see Bernhardy, 
Griech. Lit. II. p. 98 sq. ; Yolkinann, Gesch. und Kritik der 
WolPschen Prolegomena zu -Homer, pp. 1-35. 

20 For the influence of Wolf's Prolegomena beyond the 
circle of scholars, see Friedlander, Die Homerische Kritik 
von Wolf bis Grote (1853), pp. 1-6; Bernhardy, Griech. Lit. 
II. 1, pp. 99-103, and especially the section on this topic in 
Yolkmann's book just cited, pp. 71-181. 

21 Briefwechsel mit Goethe, No. 459. 

22 Hermann und Dorothea, [The short poem in elegiac 
metre, not the well-known long one in hexameters. — Tr.] 

"Here's to the health of the man who has opened us all a new field 
Where we may roam, by breaking clown Homer's great name ! 
For who to the gods, or who to 'the poet,' refuses to yield? 
But to be ranked as a Homerid, even as youngest, is fame." 

23 Goethe, Works, oct. ed. of 1827, vol. iii. p. 156. A sim- 
ilar utterance of his from a much earlier time, scarcely 
eighteen months after the expression of the liveliest as- 
sent to Wolf's views, in a letter to Schiller of May 16th, 
1798, is given below in note 57. Compare Yolkmann as 
above, p. 75. 

24 Korte,Leben Wolf's, pp. 64 sq., 73 sq., 265 ; Yolkmann, 
pp. 35-48. 

25 Preface to edition of the Iliad, Leipzig, 1804, pp. xxi.- 
xxiv. 

26 Lachmann, Betrachtungen iiber die Ilias, mit Zusatzen 
von Moritz Haupt (Berlin, 1847). Earlier than the first part 
(1837) of Lachmann's Betrachtungen appeared the valua- 
ble treatise of G. Hermann, " De interpolationibus Homeri " 



72 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC FOEMS. 

(1832) ; Opuscula, vol. v. pp. 52-77. How decidedly Lach- 
maun's work made an epoch id the discussion is clear from 
the fact that the whole of the extensive literature upon the 
unity of the Iliad (the most important works of which are 
mentioned below in notes 58-82) consists of assent to, op- 
position to, or modification of, his researches. 

27 As a comprehensive statement of the arguments on 
this side, G. W. Nitzsch's work, Die Sagenpoesie der 
Griechen kritisch dargestellt (1852), deserves prominent 
mention (see also Schomann's searching criticism of it in 
Jahn's Jahrbucher, vol. lxix., and in his treatise " De reticen- 
tia Homeri" (1853), Opusc. vol. iii.). That Nitzsch, how- 
ever, in spite of his absolutely rejecting and indefatiga- 
b]y assailing Lachmann's investigations, in some essential 
points comes very nearly to the same results, is shown be- 
low in note 82. Both tendencies, the opposition to Lach- 
mann and the substantial agreement with his results, ap- 
pear in his posthumous work, Beitrage zur Geschichte der 
Epischen Poesie der Griechen (1862) : it was criticised by 
J. La Roche in the Zeitschrift fur das osterreichische Gym- 
nasialwesen, 1863. On the same side with Nitzsch are sev- 
eral thorough essays by W. Baumlein : Kritik der Lach- 
mann'schen Schrift in the Zeitschrift f. d. A. W., 1848 and 
1850; Commentatio de compositione II. et Odysseae (Maul- 
bronn, 1847) ; Preface to the Tauchnitz edition of the Iliad ; 
in Philologus, vols. vii. and xi. ; and in Jahn's Jahrb., vol. 
lxxv. Two essays in Diintzer's Homerische Abhandlun- 
gen (1872), pp. 28 and 101, oppose Lachmann's views in al- 
most every particular. Duntzer's own view as to the unity 
of the two poems is mentioned below in note 82. Fried- 
lander's essay in defence of Grote's theory of the Iliad, 
Die Homerische Kritik von Wolf bis Grote (1853), may 



NOTE 27. 73 

also be regarded as a polemic against the main points of 
Lachmanns theory. It was attacked by W. Ribbeck, in 
Philologus, vol. viii. ; "Prafung neuerer Ansichten iiber die 
Ilias." Opposed to both these parties at once — to the 
party of Lachmann as well as to that of Nitzsch — is the 
" new hypothesis " advanced by J. Minckwitz in his Yor- 
schule zurn Homer (1863). As to its relation to the two 
parties, see note 82. A recent addition to the list of books 
in defence of the theory of original unity is F. Nutzhorn's 
Die Entstehungsweise der Homerischen G-ediehte — Unter- 
suchungen iiber die Berechtigung der auflosenden Homer- 
Kritik, with a preface by J. N. Madvig. In his preface 
Madvig denies to the agency of Peisistratos that impor- 
tance in the work of compiling the Homeric poems which 
Wolf and Lachmann have ascribed to it ; and supposes — 
very nearly as Xitzsch does (see note 82) — that unity of 
conception and the appropriation of earlier songs were 
combined in the production of the poems : " But he who 
conceived the grand poetic thought could easily, in a time 
when the ideas of literary reputation and property did not 
yet exist, take up into his poem with little alteration pas- 
sages which others had composed in the same metre, or 
his shaping of one passage or another might be so far de- 
termined by the influence of earlier lays that certain char- 
acteristic traits and even turns of expression might be re- 
produced in his poem. The Homeric poems are not a 
patchwork of songs, but were composed as independent 
wholes under the stimulus and control of earlier songs " 
(p. xi.). Xutzhorn, in the first part of his book ( %; The His- 
torical Evidence," pp. 1-98), strives to set aside as untrust- 
worthy the statements which are used to disprove the 
original unity of the poems. In the second part (" The 



74 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

Internal Evidence," pp. 100-2G8) lie discusses some of the 
contradictions which have been pointed out in the Iliad, 
and explains them away or ascribes little importance to 
them, in the hope of thus establishing the original unity 
of conception of the poems against attack from any quar- 
ter. We may recognize the fervor of enthusiasm for the 
poet, for which Madvig praises the author (p. xi.), but the 
work itself can hardly be thought to contribute much to 
the Homeric discussion, since it touches no point connect- 
ed with the real question which had not been more calmly 
and more thoroughly treated in previous works. 

Bergk, in the first volume of his Griechische Litera- 
tur-Geschichte (Berlin, 1872) — which is mainly occupied 
with the subject of Homer — takes a position in defence of 
the original unity of the Iliad against Lachmann, but in a 
very different sense from the writers hitherto named. In or- 
der to avoid possible inaccuracies, I will confine myself, in 
attempting to state Bergk's view of the origin of the Iliad, 
so far as possible to his own words, even where the usual 
quotation marks do not appear. The Iliad, as well as the 
Odyssey, was originally " a single poem, composed on a 
definite plan," and written down by the poet himself, to 
whom we may reasonably assign the name Homer. In the 
present form of the Iliad " we detect three essentially dif- 
ferent elements : the original poem, additions in the form 
of continuations, and the work of a final reviser. The 
primitive Iliad was a poem of moderate length, though it 
is impossible now, since parts of it are lost, to tell exactly 
how long it was ; of the present poem the greater part 
consists of later additions. It was also simple in struct- 
ure." " The genuine portions of the Iliad have an incom- 
parable beauty and dignity. If it were possible to detach 



NOTE 27. 75 

them wholly from the later additions and modifications, 
our enjoyment and admiration of them would be greatly 
intensified. " Still w T e must not " set up too high a stand- 
ard for the work of a poet who made the first attempt to 
construct an epic poem ; such a work could be brought to 
perfection only by slow degrees." u This gradual build- 
ing-up of the poem is the sufficient explanation of many 
contradictions and many variations in the poetic style." 
" Still the difference of the various parts [of what we actu- 
ally have], the amount of the disturbing element, is too 
great to allow the opinion that the Iliad in its present 
form proceeded from a single hand." This " suggests the 
agency of several persons in the expansion of the orig- 
inal poem. The work of the great master was at once 
carried on by younger poets, whom we must suppose to 
have lived in close connection with him, and whom we 
may call Homeridae. But others, too, who were not born 
into this family circle, took part in the work, as one addi- 
tion gave rise to another." The " self-restraint and mod- 
eration which distinguished those poets were unfortunate- 
ly lacking in the editor who undertook to combine these 
later songs with the primitive Iliad, and, at the same time, 
to continue the work of the younger poets. Thus he not 
only worked over the original nucleus and its outgrowths, 
but added longer or shorter passages of his own produc- 
tion. These additions of the reviser exceed in length and 
audacity all that his predecessors had done in this direc- 
tion. But the chief injury done by him to the poems 
consists in his having wholly suppressed important parts 
of them, substituting his own work in their place, or so 
modified them that it is hardly possible to recognize the 
original any more, and that not only where his additions 



76 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

involved such changes, but also arbitrarily and needlessly. 
It has been the principal task of the present critical anal- 
ysis of the Iliad to indicate the work of this audacious re- 
viser, for, although he impressed a distinct character on all 
that passed through his hands, the real facts of the matter 
have never, up to this time, been suspected by scholars." 
" This reviser gave to the Iliad essentially the form it now 
has. After him but few considerable additions — such as 
the Catalogue of the Ships and the last two books — were 
made. Even these additions were made before the be- 
ginning of the Olympiads, so that Arktinos and the oth- 
er cyclic poets had the poem before them in completed 
form." [Here follows Bergk's analysis of the Iliad, which 
is omitted on account of its length. — Tit.] When I try to 
estimate — so far as Bergk's language makes it possible — 
the amount of the several elements of our present Iliad on 
the basis of his analysis, I find that of the (about) 16,000 
lines of the poem he recognizes some 1400 as genuine, 
that is, as belonging to the original Iliad, and some 5800 
as half genuine, that is, as original lines, but so modified 
by the reviser that it is no longer possible to distinguish 
clearly the original element from the modification. The 
probability of such a thorough change of form, consist- 
ing not merely in additions and expansions, but also in 
omissions, substitutions, etc., seems greatly embarrassed 
by Bergk's supposition that the Iliad was originally com- 
mitted to writing by its author. Bergk anticipates this 
objection, and says : " It is precisely oral tradition that 
best preserves the details. A poem that passes from 
mouth to mouth is handed down more nearly as it is 
received, or, if changed at all, is completely changed ; 
whereas putting it in writing brings with it its own evils. 



NOTE 27. 77 

Every rhapsode who wrote down the poem for himself 
could easily change the text at his pleasure, and the 
longer poems gave ojjportunity for partial changes, arbi- 
trary additions, and new combinations of parts. The ear- 
lier epic poetry was in the highest degree fluid in sub- 
stance, and the use of writing put no check upon its va- 
riation; indeed, we may say that writing facilitated the 
production of a corrupt and defective text/' For answer 
to this, if any answer is needed, one may see the remarks 
of W. Hartel in his review of Bergk's Literatur-Geschichte 
in the Zeitschrift far d. osterr. Gym., 1873, p. 357. To esti- 
mate the reality of these changes, and judge as to the as- 
signment of particular passages to these different hands, 
would require more room than Bergk's analysis itself oc- 
cupies, and is made more difficult by special peculiarities. 
In spite of no lack of confidence on his part, we rind so 
frequently expressions implying uncertainty — " probably," 
" may be," " would seem," etc. — that it is hardly less dif- 
ficult to draw a clear line between what he considers 
proved and what he indicates as mere opinion, than be- 
tween the genuine and the ungenuine in the Iliad. And 
for what he puts forward as certain there is either no rea- 
son given, or the reason is either a presupposition as to 
the contents of the original mythical matter (e. g. that ev- 
ery mention of Idomeneus is due to the reviser), which 
implies knowledge which is not and perhaps never can be 
attained, or an aesthetic judgment (as in his high opinion 
of the river-battle in XXI.) which will hardly command 
general assent. Bergk says indignantly of Lachmann : 
" It goes beyond all reasonable credibility when the mod- 
ern criticism expects us to recognize a mere compilation 
of loosely connected songs in those two poems, which not 



78 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

only the simple, natural, popular feeling, but the unani- 
mous verdict of acknowledged masters in poetry and 
philosophy has for centuries regarded as an indivisible 
whole." That this " unanimous verdict," imposing as it 
sounds, is no reality, I have endeavored above (p. 18 sqq.) 
to show ; but when Bergk invokes it against Lachmann, it 
is hard to see how he can deny that it bears with just the 
same force against himself. Aeschylos and Sophokles, 
Plato and Aristotle, we know had the Iliad in the same 
form — apart from inconsiderable variations of the text — 
in which we read it ; and what they admired was. the 
Iliad as a whole and as the work of one poet; of the rav- 
ages of the audacious reviser they had as little suspicion 
as had modern criticism before Bergk. What really sur- 
passes " all reasonable credibility " is that Bergk expects 
us to recognize, of the poem which he himself describes 
as above, only one tenth as the untouched work of that 
creator of the epic, a much larger part as the off-hand 
production of the light-minded reviser, and more than 
half of the whole as a confused mixture of successive de- 
posits of poetry. 

28 Even for professional scholars there have appeared in 
recent times several statements of the present condition 
of the Homeric question, e. g. by K. A. J. Hoffmann, "Der 
gegenwartige Stand der Untersuchungen tiber die Einheit 
der Ilias" (Allg. Monatsschrift fur Wissensch. und Literatur, 
1852) ; G. Curtius, " Andeutungen liber den gegenw. Stand 
der Homerischen Frage" (Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 
1854) ; Hiecke, Der gegenw. Stand der Horn. Frage 
(Stralsund, 1856). An article by J. La Koche (" Ueber 
die Entstehung der Horn. Gedichte " in the last -men- 
tioned journal for 1863) is an attempt to determine with 



NOTES 28-33. 79 

the aid of the labors of previous scholars the definite 
marks of interpolations and points of juncture through 
the vrhole of the two poems. It contains also a brief 
statement of the author's opinions as to the general proc- 
ess of growth of the Iliad and Odyssey, and an attempt 
to indicate the several original lays which can still be 
recognized in it. 

29 In this section I have endeavored to present briefly 
some of the principal results of the pregnant discussions 
by M. Sengebusch (Homerica dissertatio prior et posterior) 
referred to above in the early notes. 

30 The Hesiodic epic and the cyclic poems not con- 
nected with the Trojan myths have been purposely left 
unmentioned to simplify the discussion, inasmuch as they 
do not throw light directly upon the point of view under 
which the question is here discussed. 

31 A sketch of the several epics belonging to the Trojan 
myth, made up by combination of scattered notices and 
scanty fragments, is given by Welcker in Der Epische Cy- 
clus oder die Homerischen Dickter. This book, like all 
his similar w^orks, has great value from his profound 
knowledge of all the remains of ancient Greek literature 
and art ; but it oversteps the limits that are set to our 
knowledge by the fragmentary condition of its sources. 
The section on the post-Homeric epic poets in Xitzsch's 
Beitrage zur Geschichte der Epischcn Poesie goes still 
further in this direction. 

32 Welcker, as above, pp. 1-82. A modification of 
"Welckers view is implied in KirchhofTs investigations 
on the composition of the Odyssey, see p. 56 sqq. of the 
lecture and the accompanying notes. 

33 Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 23-25. 



80 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

34 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 14, gives a view of the 
amount of the epic poetry which is assigned to Homer 
by Pindar, Simonides, Aeschylos, Sophokles, Aristophanes, 
and Thucydides ; the proof of his statements is given in 
the corresponding passage of Diss. I. 

35 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 15. 

36 Brought together in Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 13. 

37 Anthol. Pal. II. pp. 715, 295 sq. (in Jacob's Delectus 
Epigramm. Graecorum, IV. 6). 

38 As to the time of composition of the lives of Homer 
that have come down to us, see Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 1-13, 
and the authorities quoted in them, p. 19 sq. The whole of 
diss. I. treats of their value. 

39 Sengebusch, Diss. II. pp. 47-69. 

40 Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 70. 

41 A view of the several dates, with the authorities for 
them, is given by Sengebusch in Jahn's Jahrbucher, 67, 
p. 611 sqq., and Diss. II. p. 78. Roth (Geschichte der 
abencll. Philosophic, II. p. 38), with noteworthy naivete* 
quotes the date given by Herodotus as if it were the only 
one ever suggested. By such a method it is certainly 
easy to triumph over the whole Homeric discussion set 
on foot by Wolf as " a long since exploded paradox," 
which "proceeded from half- knowledge of history." I 
mention this because such lofty language actually imposes 
upon readers who are not in a position to investigate the 
matter themselves ; and also because recently (Literal*. 
Centralblatt, 1860, No. 7) philology was reproached with 
having kept a significant silence about Roth's book. The 
groundlessness of this reproach can be seen by a glance at 
the second edition of Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen. 
But such a method as that just mentioned in regard to 



NOTES 34-43. 81 

the period of Homer needs no criticism but to be left to 
bring on its own judgment. 

42 Those statements are excluded, in both cases, which 
depend not on actual tradition, but merely on the conject- 
ures and computations of learned men. — Sengebusch, Jahn's 
Jahrb. 67, p. 609 sqq. ; Diss. II. p. 69. 

43 Sengebusch, first in his review of Lauer's Gesch. der 
Horn. Poesie, Jahn's Jahrb. 67 ; then in Diss. II. The 
chronological principles followed in these discussions are 
attacked by J. Brandis, De temporum antiquiss. Graeco- 
rum rationibus, Index lect. (Bonna, 1857-58). Compare the 
review of this essay by A. von Gutschmid, Jahn's Jahrb. 
83. An unqualified condemnation of Sengebusch's in- 
vestigations is expressed by Bergk (Griech. Literatur- 
Gesch. I. p. 463) : " This hypothesis has been praised as 
not only ingenious but well-supported ; yet any oue who 
takes the pains to examine it thoroughly will find it hol- 
low and worm-eaten all through." This thorough exam- 
ination Bergk does not offer us directly nor enable us to 
gain indirectly from his own treatment of the subject. 
For, among the statements as to the place of Homer, he 
accepts one and condemns all the rest without reason 
given ; and, as to the time of Homer, he rejects all tradi- 
tions as pure fiction, and puts his confidence solely in 
general combinations. Such a proceeding is, in truth, 
very simple and convenient, but it wholly neglects to ex- 
plain the real and unique multiplicity of statements, and 
gives one no right to condemn at a blow every attempt to 
explain it. See Hartel, Zeitschr. ftir d. osterr. Gym., 1873; 
and, as to the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, which 
Bergk adopts, J. Schmidt, De Herodotea quae fertur vita 
Homeri (Halle, 1875). 

6 



82 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

44 Herod. II. 53 ; Sengebusch, Jahn's Jalirb. 67, p. 373 
sqq. 

45 Sengebusch, Jahn's Jalirb. 67, p. 614. Against this, 
Volkmann, Gesch. unci Kritik der Wolf schen Prolego- 
mena, p. 358 (cf. p. 275 sqq.) : u We have no tradition 
of the work or of the existence of Homeric! ae or of any 
school of epic poetry outside of Chios. The assumption 
of their existence is a purely arbitrary assumption." 

46 Wolf, Prolegomena, pp. 40-94 ; Sengebusch, Diss. II. 
p. 41 sqq. I have left the statement in the lecture un- 
changed, although Bergk (Griech. Lit. I. pp. 185-214), and 
after him Volkmann (Gesch. etc., pp. 181-232), have en- 
deavored to prove that even before the Trojan War the 
art of writing was in use among the Greeks. The earliest 
instance of waiting yet discovered, of determinable date, is 
the cutting of their names by Greek mercenaries on the 
Nubian colossus (Kirchhoff, Griech. Alphabet, 2cl eel. p. 31 
sqq.). If we assume as probable the earlier of the possi- 
ble dates for this inscription, it proves that the art of 
writing was widely diffused among the Greeks about 
620 B.C. ; and, of course, this wide diffusion implies the 
existence and practice of it for a considerable time before 
that date. These facts agree fully with the development 
of Greek literature in prose and poetry. But to carry 
back the use of writing more than five hundred years be- 
fore that elate is in no way justified by the existence of 
this inscription. Bergk himself frankly admits this as 
applying to Homer, whose period he puts fully two cen- 
turies after the Trojan War: "It is impossible to decide, 
on historical evidence, whether these poems were, in the 
first instance, committed to writing. . . . We are, therefore, 
left to depend upon combinations." As to the value of 



NOTES 44-47. 83 

the most important of these combinations, see Hartel, 
Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1873, p. 350 sqq., 1874, p. 822 
sqq. "While I express, at the beginning of my discussion 
of the origin of the poems, the conviction that they were 
not originally committed to writing, and therein follow 
the historical course of the investigation, I feel myself 
obliged, in opposition to Bergk and especially to Volk- 
mann, to deny that this conviction includes the central 
point, or even a clearly decisive element of the answer to 
the question as to the origin of the poems. On the con- 
trary, this question is to be decided only by arguments 
drawn from the poems themselves. If the study of the 
poems constrains us to the conclusions stated on p. 59 
sqq., we must hold fast those conclusions whether an orig- 
inal use of writing in this case is proved on other grounds 
or not, although it cannot be overlooked that they agree 
best with the latter supposition. 

47 Roth, it is true, says (Abendl. Philos. II. p. 41) : " Ho- 
mer himself mentions the art of writing, and that, too, as 
practised in the heroic age;" and, certainly, in his transla- 
tion of II. 6 : 169 there is mention of it. But that there is 
no such mention of it in the words of Homer is so familiar 
a fact that it is hardly necessary to refer a reader of Homer 
to Lehrs, De Aristarcho, p. 103 ; Sengebusch, Diss. II. p. 42 
sqq. Bergk says on this passage : k - The well-known pas- 
sage in the Iliad, where Proteus intrusts to Bellerophon 
the fateful missive, is explained, not necessarily, but very 
probably, as referring to a system of secret writing. 
This, however, by no means excludes, but rather pre- 
supposes the knowledge and use of the ordinary writ- 
ing." The reason given by Bergk for the absence in Ho- 
mer of any mention of the arts of reading and writing, 



S-i THE ORIGIN OF TOE HOMERIC POEMS. 

though they were known before the Trojan War, viz., " be- 
cause they seemed inconsistent with his ideal picture of a 
primitive state of society," is one that I cannot criticise, be- 
cause I do not understand it. Homer finds it consistent 
with his "picture of primitive society" to mention a high 
degree of art in weaving, in the working of metal, ivory, 
wood, not as produced by gods only, but by men also, on 
whom Athene and Hephaestos have bestowed such gifts. 
How would the art of writing, if in use before the heroic 
age of the Iliad, as a gift of Hermes perhaps, differ from 
these so as to disturb the picture of primitive society? 
But, possibly, for it is not easy to follow out his analysis of 
the poem, all those references to other arts of civilization 
are inventions of the "audacious reviser." 

48 Bekker, Horn. Blatter, I. p. 136 : " This [Homeric] 
language, developed in the course of a great migration, 
under the unceasing influences of the meetings, the fric- 
tions, the interminglings of kindred tribes, and controlled 
only by song and the lyre, attained indeed to a great wealth 
of euphonious forms, but seems to have gone through the 
stage of trying all possible combinations, and to have had 
no fixed, unchanging, exclusive system of forms, such as 
came in later by the general spread of writing. Litem 
scripta manetP On the other hand, Bergk, Griech. Lit. I. 
p. 200: "As the peculiar orthography of the poems is a 
conclusive proof of their great age, so the remarkably 
regular and transparent form of the language shows the 
wide diffusion in early times of the art of writing. The 
rare purity in which the Greek language was preserved is 
scarcely credible without constant use of that art, which 
is not only the foundation of all higher cultivation, but 
gives to language its settled form and its power to pro- 



NOTES 48-55. S5 

tect itself against corrupting influences." Compare on 
this Hartel. Zeitsehr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1873, p. 352. 

M The AiOioTric and 'iXt'ou jre/wwc of the Milesian Arkti- 

nos.TVelcker.EpischeCyel.il. For the settling of the date 
775 B.C. as the ar/iq of Arktinos. see Sengebusch. Jahn's 
Jahrb. 67. — KirchhofF in his essay. Quaestionum Horn. 
particula ('Berlin. 1845), proves that the Krrota of Stasi- 
nos. written about 660 B.C.. recognized several books of the 
Iliad in the form and connection in which we have them. 

1 The laws of Zaleukos. about 664 B.C. Cf. Wolf, Proleg. 
p. 66 sqq. 

51 Sengebusch. Diss. II. p. 45. 

-'- The authorities for this important fact are given in 
Sengebusch. Diss. II. pp. 27-41 : Diintzer. Homerische Ab- 
handlungen. pp. 1-27. The historic credibility of the state- 
ments about Peisistratos is criticised by Xutzhorn (n. '27). 
pp. 16-66. and Volkmann. 

sa Sengebusch. Diss. I. pp. 193-107. 

- Sengebusch, Diss. I. pp. 71 sq., 186^ 200 sqq. 

55 The principles of text-criticism in regard to the Ho- 
meric poems which have been accepted since "Wolf's time 
are concisely stated by L. Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79. 
The relation of Wolf's text to those of previous editions 
and to Yilloison's edition of the MS. Yen. 454 is stated by 
Bekker. Horn. Blatter, pp. 232, '296. A material part of the 
principles on which Bt-kker's text-edition of 1S43 is based 
will be found in his criticism of Wolf's edition. Horn. Blat- 
ter, p. 29. Bekker's text (1843) is the foundation of the 
editions which have since appeared, with the exception of 
Dindorf 's in the Teubner series, as to which cf. J. La Roche. 
Zeitsehr. far d. osterr. Gym.. 1 S G 3 . How far Bekker's princi- 
ples were modified in his second edition of 1858 is stated 



SG THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

in the preface to that edition, and further explanations are 
to be found in the Horn. Blatter. This second edition was 
reviewed by W. C. Kayser, Philologus, vols. xvii. and xviii.; 
Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79; Rumpf, J aim's Jahrb. 81 ; J. 
La Roche, Zeitschr. far d. Osterr. Gym., 1860. As to the most 
recent text-editions with critical apparatus of the Odyssey 
by J. La Roche, Leipzig, 1867, and A. Nauck, Berlin, 1874, 
see A. Ludwich, Wissensch. Monatsblatter, 1873 ; JalnVs 
Jahrb. 109 ; and Eickholt, Zeitschrift fur cl. Gymnasialwesen, 
1868. 

56 These words mark the limits within which all the fol- 
lowing discussion is confined; it contains no conclusions 
to which the two Homeric poems, as they now lie before 
us, do not lead by reasonable inference. It is, for instance, 
possible that one might be led, by comparison of the de- 
velopment of epic poetry in other nations or by general 
reasonings, to hold that, before the existence of epic lays of 
moderate comjDass and limited to single incidents of the 
myth, such as the Iliad implies, there must be assumed as 
existing epic poems of equally moderate extent but cover- 
ing the main substance of the whole myth with less detail. 
The reasonableness of such or similar assumptions is not 
here discussed, because that would involve abandonment 
of the ground on which all our conclusions are based, viz., 
the facts presented to us in Greek literature. 

57 Goethe, correspondence with Schiller, No. 472 : "I am 
more than ever convinced of the unity and indivisibility of 
the poem, and there is no man living, nor will there ever 
be, who can settle the question. I, at least, find myself 
every moment coming back to a mere subjective opinion ; 
so has it been with others before us, and so will it be with 
others after us. 1 ' 



NOTES 56-GO. 87 

58 Nitzsch, Sagenpoesie, p. 89, and this idea is carried out 
at length in pp. 184-273. Cf. Baumlein, Commentatio de 
Homero ej usque carniinibus (prefixed to tlie Iliad in the 
Tauchnitz series), pp. xx. -xxvii., particularly p. xxiii. : 
"Nor will any one doubt that a single, and, as Mtzsch has 
shown, a tragical idea runs through the whole Iliad," and 
again in Philol. II. p. 417. Against such a single funda- 
mental idea in the Iliad, see Duntzer, Jahivs Jahrb. 83, and 
Supplementband 2 (Honi. Abhandlungen, pp. 236, 410). 

59 Schomann, De reticentia Homeri, Opusc. III. p. 12 sq., 
and Jalm's Jahrb. 69. 

60 Grote, History of Greece, Am. ed. II. p. 179 sqq. As to 
the method in which Nitzsch tries to bring the important 
passages II. 11 : 609 sq. ; 16 : 72 sqq. into harmony with the 
ninth book, see Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, and De reticen- 
tia Horn., Opusc. III. p. 15. Franke's revision of Faesi's Ili- 
ad, in the note on the former passage and at the beginning 
of the ninth book, frankly acknowledges the inconsistency. 
The silence of La Roche as to the difficulty in both the pas- 
sages quoted is a neglect of the function of an explanatory 
edition. Faesi's note on the passage in the sixteenth book, 
wdiere Achilles, when Patroklos begs his permission to go 
into the battle, answers that the Trojans would be in dis- 
graceful flight instead of triumphant, d poi Kpeicov 'AyafxsfjLvwv 
i]7ria ddeh], " if Agamemnon were well disposed to me," is as 
follows : " The haughty Achilles is not yet willing to con- 
fess that the chief blame for the calamity lies on him, and 
refuses to remember that Agamemnon, in the ninth book, 
has done all in his power to appease him. He will not be 
put in the wrong." The fact, that is, that the here inevita- 
ble reference to the ninth book is lacking, is twisted into 
a delicate touch of psychological portraiture, but Faesi 



8S THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

could hardly deny that for such a purpose the poet ought 
to use and would have used other means. This interpreta- 
tion really substitutes something else for the text. The ap- 
proving reference in Franke's Faesi to the exclusion by the 
early critics of 11 : 767-785 seems hardly justified. The es- 
sential reason on the part of the early critics (see Schol. 
Yen.) for the exclusion of these lines was their want of har- 
mony with the ninth book, a point of view which this ed- 
itor cannot adopt; and the assumption of an interpolation 
is reasonable only when some occasion for the insertion of 
it can be shown. 

61 II. 15 : 63, 593. Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69. 

62 Lachmann has warned us (Friecllander, Die Horn. Kri- 
tik, p. vii.) how uncertain the result is if such considera- 
tions are allowed much weight. Rash conclusions from the 
a-rral slprjjjieva and from the differences of vocabulary be- 
tween the Iliad and Odyssey are discouraged by the statis- 
tics of L. Friedlander, Die kritische Benutzung der unal 
dpr)nkva, Philol. 6, and Dissertatio de vocabulis Horn., quae 
in alterutro carmine non inveniuntur I -III. (Universitats- 
Schriften, Konigsberg, 1858-59) . This, however, diminishes 
in no degree the value of careful and thorough investiga- 
tions in this direction, such as C. A. J. Hoffmann's Quaestio- 
nes Homericae (Clausthal, 1848) ; J. La Roche's Homerische 
Studien (Wien, 1861), especially p. vii. sq. ; L. Friedlander's 
Die Garten des Alkinous und der Gebrauch des Prasens bei 
Homer, Philol. 6 ; or of special observations, like those of 
Liesegang, Zwei Eigenthumlichkeiten des 16. und 17. Buches 
der Bias, Philol. 6 (against which see Mtzsch, Die Apostro- 
phe in Bias und Odyssee, Philol. 16) ; and Koch, Ueber das 
Vorkommen gewisser Formeln in manchen Theilen der Bi- 
as, anclerer fur dieselbe Sache in anderen Theilen, Philol. 7. 



NOTES 61-65. 89 

We may confidently expect that the thorough investiga- 
tion of the Homeric poems in regard to matters of syntax 
and vocabulary which is now just started will contribute 
to the correction or confirmation of the conclusions which 
have been reached hitherto mainly on other lines of evi- 
dence. A recent example of most comprehensive, keen- 
sighted, and conscientious investigation of this kind is W. 
HarteFs Beitrage zur Homerischen Prosodie und Metrik, 
in his Homerische Studien, Sitzungsberichte der Phil.-Hist. 
Classe der Wiener Akademie, I. vol. 68 (second edition, Ber- 
lin, 1873), II. vol. 76, III. vol. 78. 

63 A number of these little points are brought together 
in Faesi's Iliad, Introd. p. vii., with references to the notes, 
where the attempt is made to reduce the contradictions as 
much as possible ; in Franke's revision (Introd. p. v.) the 
notes are free from the endeavor to disguise and explain 
away the extent of the contradictions. 

64 "cf. II. 16 : 777 with 11 : 86. Schomann, Jahn s Jahrb. 
69, p. 18, considers Kitzsch's attempt to reconcile the pas- 
sages. Faesi's attempt to diminish the inconsistency does 
violence to the language, and is in conflict with his own 
note on 8 : 66. Franke (Introd. p. xxxii. and note on 
11 : 86) and La Roche (notes on the two passages) rec- 
ognize the contradiction without trying to smooth it 
away. The essay by A. Kiner, Die Chronologie der Ilias, 
Jahn's Jahrb. 83, constructs a complete table of the days in 
the action of the Iliad, without paying any attention to 
such little matters as these. 

65 Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, p. 19. On this point, 
which every discussion of the subject touches, I refer to 
Schomanms article, because it includes a consideration of 
Mtzsch's argument in defence of the unity. 



90 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

66 Facsi himself admits, at the beginning of the sixteenth 
book, that this and the following book contain few points 
of connection with the four that precede them, and that 
they w r ere originally planned as an independent poem. 
Yet his translation, in the note on 16 : 2, of 7rapi<jrctTo, unsup- 
ported by any other case in the Iliad, and impossible here, 
by reason of top Se ISwv, in 16 : 5, and his supposition that 
the first meeting of Achilles and Patroklos is already passed 
without mention, can have no other object than to explain 
away the omission of the information which Patroklos 
w T as to bring. La Roche's silence does not solve the dif- 
ficulty. 

67 Different positions of the battle, in immediately con- 
nected narratives, may be seen by comparison of 11 : 824 with 
12 : 35-39. See Lachmann, Betrachtungen, p. 45. Franke's 
Faesi states here the simple fact that u the twelfth book 
brings at length the battle which has been in prospect since 
the end of the seventh book." For the cases of variation in 
locality, see Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, De reticentia 
Horn,, Opusc. III. p. 21 sq., notes 8, 9. 

68 II. 13 : 345-360, compared with 13 : 10-39. See A. Jacob, 
Ueber die Entstehung der Ilias und Oclyssee, p. 270 sq. 
Faesi (on 13 : 352) strives to hide the inconsistency in the 
narrative by an impossible translation of Xd9py vTreZavaSvQ, 
which he retains in his third edition, although he has added 
to the note on 345 the admission (from Nitzsch, Sagenpoe- 
sie, p. 264) that perhaps lines 345-360 may not have origi- 
nally belonged in this place. La Roche, contrary to his cus- 
tom, touches on this difficulty, and seems to try to solve it 
Kara to aiu)7rb)ii£vov (see note 79), for he remarks, on 352, 
" that Poseidon had in the meantime returned into the sea 
is left unmentioned by the poet ; in 239 it is said avng tj3rj 



NOTES 66-71. 91 

6eoq dfi ttovov avcpujvy Bergk (Gr. Lit. I. p. 607) denies the 
existence of any inconsistency. 

69 See the instances in full in A. Jacob, as above, p. 284 
sqq. ; Lachmann, Betrachtungen, p. 35. On the attempts 
to minimize, the contradictions by interpretation, or to re- 
move them by exclusion of lines, as by Faesi on 11 : 193, 
see Friedlander, Die Horn. Kritik, p. 35 sq. Franke's Faesi, 
on 11 : 193, openly states the difficulty and the different 
possible solutions. La Roche says nothing about it. 

70 II. 16 : 793-815, compared with 17 : 13, 16, 125, 187, 205. 
Faesi's note on 17 : 13 misses the real point of the matter. 
It is true that " the poet could not assume that Apollo had 
taken the arms of the slain hero away with him ;" but the 
difficulty is, that after Patroklos was yv/jivog (16 : 815), and 
the gods had taken his armor from his shoulders (16 : 846), 
there is no propriety in the statements that others stripped 
him of them (17 : 125, 187, 205). As to the combination of 
different narratives in this part of the poem, see Schutz, 
De Patrocleae compositione (Anclam, 1845). 

71 On the general character of the narrative in books XI- 
XVIII. of the Iliad, see the frank statement of Schomann, 
Jahn's Jahrb. 69. For the methods of bringing order out of 
this confusion, see Nitzsch, Sagenpoesie, pp. 240 sqq., 274 
sqq. Among these methods is the discovery that certain 
sections of the poem are to be regarded as containing inci- 
dents concurrent in time, where, however, the poet has un- 
fortunately neglected to indicate the concurrence. This 
very useful theory of narratives parallel in time is accepted 
by Bergk in another connection, Gr. Lit. I. p. 657, 704. Cf 
W. Hartel, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1873. As to the 
contradictions in this portion of the poem, there is general 
agreement in the discussions by G. Hermann (work cited 



92 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

in note 26), Lachmann (same note), E. Cauer (Ueber die Ur- 
form einiger Rhapsodien der Ilias, Berlin, 1850), W. Rib- 
beck (Philol. 8), A. Jacob (note 68) ; but the hypotheses as 
to the parts of which it is probably composed differ consid- 
erably. 

72 Lessing, Laokoon, XVI. 

73 By the combination of separate narratives as an occa- 
sion of difficulty, I refer, in the examples in the text, always 
to connection in subject-matter, not to the w 7 ords which 
form the transition from one narrative to another. The 
difference between the two is plainly seen in the case of 
the first and second books, where both come into consider- 
ation, but in different ways. The case itself is interesting, 
on account of the devices employed to solve the difficulty. 
That the second book cannot be regarded as a proper con- 
tinuation of the first in subject-matter was convincingly 
shown by Gr. Hermann (Opusc. v. p. 57). Since he pointed 
out the difficulties, no one has been able to pass them over 
in silence. To meet his arguments, Nitzsch (Sagenpoesie) 
takes refuge in " the condition of the myth," thus tacitly 
admitting the impossibility of an explanation. Nagelsbach 
(Anmerk. zur II. 2. Ami.) declares the second book neces- 
sary for the purpose of the poet, "to bring before us the 
feeling in the army, the attitude of the chiefs towards Ag- 
amemnon;" and that the dream does not turn out destruc- 
tive (ovXog), " does not," says he, " disturb us in the least ; 
the decision of Zeus, to give victory to the Trojans, finds a 
serious obstacle in the valor of the Greeks, which hinders 
its execution." But, however true it is that the feeling of 
the army is vividly brought before us in the second book, 
still this ought not, if the second book is a continuation of 
the first in the original composition, to be done under cir- 



NOTES 72-73. 93 

cuinstances which do not agree with the first book. This 
point, which is the only one really in question, is not touched 
by that explanation of the poet's purpose. And if the fulfil- 
ment of the decree of Zeus was hindered by the valor of 
the Greeks, would not, and ought not, a poem conceived by 
a single mind to have given us a hint that v-sp cuaav 'Axcuoi 
(psp-epoi i)(jav ? Baumlein (Philol. 7), instead of proving the 
unity of the two books in subject, offers only the assertion 
that there is such a unity, quoting as proof certain lines in 
the second book which refer to the first. These lines, which 
no one has overlooked in the discussion of the inner connec- 
tion of the two books, prove nothing but the intention to 
adapt one to the other. Baumlein further describes the 
conduct of Agamemnon, in the council and the assembly 
of the second book, as " intelligible on psychological princi- 
ples from the events of the first book ;" and therein sug- 
gests an idea, which is expanded with all confidence in an 
essay by A. Gobel (Miitzell's G. Z., 1854). In that essay we 
have the gap between the two narratives completely filled 
by imagination, so as to make the connection seem all right. 
These capricious fancies (of which an example is given in 
note 79) Faesi regards as well-founded reasoning, and bases 
on them his unhesitating statement at the beginning of the 
second book, that it " stands in close connection with the 
first book, and assumes precisely the same situation of affairs 
and state of feeling that we see at its end.*' This untena- 
ble assertion Franke displaces by the more moderate re- 
mark, "the second book narrates the first step taken by 
Zeus towards the fulfilment of his promise to Thetis." A 
very different question is the one as to the words which 
form the connecting link between the first and second 
books. Lachmann, in the introduction to his Betrachtun- 



94 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. 

gen, mentions, as a striking illustration of the fact that be- 
tween two successive sections of the Iliad it seems often to 
be implied in the language that one song ends and another 
begins, the lines 1 : 609 sqq. and 2:1 sq. " Neither is the 
antithesis complete, as if it were ' All went to bed and slept, 
but Zeus slept not,' instead of which we have ' The gods 
went to bed, and also Zeus slept. The other gods and men 
slept, but Zeus did not;' nor, on the other hand, if the 
statement was to follow at once, ' Zeus slept not, but sum- 
moned the dream-god,' was there any object in first men- 
tioning that by him lay golden-throned Hera, who, how- 
ever, was not to know of the sending of the dream." This 
puts a very awkward obstacle in the way of interpretation, 
and to remove it one of two means must be employed; 
either m0£utfe (1 : 611) does not mean "he slept," or ovk t^e 
vrjdvfiog vttvoq (2 : 2) does not mean " he slept not." Both 
means have actually been employed. KaOevde is translated 
" he lay down to sleep " by Gross (Vindiciae Horn. I.), with 
quotation ofOd.4: 304; 6:1; 7:344; 8:313; 20:141; "he 
went to sleep," by Doderlein (on II. 1 : 611), who quotes the 
same passages; "he lay in bed," by Ameis (on Od. 15 : 5). 
The passages in Od. 8 : 313, 337, 342 are out of the ques- 
tion, for there evdeiv is a mere euphemism for (pL\6r)]Ti fiiyrjvai. 
The other quoted passages, where it is indifferent which 
sense, " to sleep " or " to fall asleep," is given to the word, 
or where the latter is admissible, can prove nothing for a 
passage where a positive preference for one meaning is es- 
sential to the interpretation. Moreover, this view ignores 
the weight which the secondary meaning of the word ought 

to have in determining its original sense. These Consid- 
er o 

erations, perhaps, influenced Nagelsbach,in the second edi- 
tion of his commentary, to speak of this translation as "a 



NOTES 71-77. 95 

wide-spread error." He tries the other method, explaining 
Aia d' ovic ex £ vy)8vhoq vttvoq, " Zeus was not chained in sleep 
the whole night, but after a time he awoke, and meditated 
how to fulfil his promise to Thetis." So also La Eoche. 
But this is not in the words, for ovk e%s and o ye fiepfjLijpi^e 
are put together as coincident in time, and it is not said 
that he awoke from sleep, as it is in Od. 15:8, though Na- 
gelsbach quotes that passage as sustaining his view. The 
other passage which he quotes, II. 9 : 713 and 10 : 1-4, is 
simply another instance of inconsistency between the end 
of one lay and the beginning of another. Both of these 
means are combined by Doderlein (on II. 5 : 2), and by 
Faesi in his notes ; but Franke, in his edition of Faesi, 
rejects all such artifices (In trod. p. v., note, and on 2 : 2). 
This instance illustrates the difference between difficulties 
in the phrases of transition and those in the continuity of 
the subject-matter, to which latter class all our examples 
belong. It may also show how, in almost every case, the 
conflict of the conservatives and radicals has had a long 
history. 

74 Instead of the expositions of the startling want of se- 
quence here (e. g. G. Hermann, De interpol. Horn., Opusc. 
v.), it may be well to read the enthusiastic praise of the 
passage by Nitzsch (Sagenpoesie). Faesi's remarks, in the 
Introduction, p. xxi., and in the note on II. 3 : 15, can hardly 
be reconciled. Franke substitutes for the former the sim- 
ple statement that " the often announced and anticipated 
battle of the two armies is still postponed." 

75 Lachmann, Betrachtungen, p. 22 ; A. Jacob, Ueber die 
Entstehung, etc., p. 215. 

76 A. Jacob, as above, p. 209. 

77 Of these works perhaps the best for the unprofessional 



96 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

reader is that by A. Jacob, which states the inconsistencies 
minutely and gives the principal passages in German. 

78 See this point developed in A. Kochly's De Iliadis car- 
minibus diss. III. p. 6 sqq. 

79 Among these harmonizing devices, the most prominent 
is the supposition that the poet omits to mention, and leaves 
the reader to supply, some particular which is essential to 
the understanding of the narrative. To what an extreme 
Mtzsch carries the use of this device, Kara to (nio-n-wfievovj is 
shown by Schomann (De ret. Horn.) and Kochly (De II. carm. 
diss. III.). It is used also by Faesi, for instance, in the notes 
on II. 3 : 249, 259 (where also Ameis, La Roche, and Franke 
do the same), on II. 5 : 510 (where Franke recognizes its in- 
adequacy), and elsewhere. The use of it by Ameis and La 
Roche on II. 5 : 133 surely needs no refutation (see Franke's 
note on the passage). What may be done by a free use of 
this time-honored device may be seen from an instance in 
A. Gobel's treatise, mentioned in note 73. The line II. 1 : 
487 is usually supposed to contain nothing more than the 
simple fact of a dispersion of the men to their tents and 
ships, as in other similar lines (e. g. II. 19 : 277 ; 23 : 3 ; 24 : 2). 
But Gobel finds in it " they scattered themselves hurriedly 
among the ships and tents, as if a guilty conscience hunted 
them away, or, rather, as if a mysterious storm-cloud was 
hovering over the Greek camp." On such fancies, which 
any sound principles of interpretation condemn, is built up 
the psychological explanation of the connection between the 
first two books of the Iliad. A very successful contrivance 
for removing contradictions is the assumption of an inter- 
polation. That many such would creep into an epic poem 
which was long preserved only by oral tradition is certain ; 
but there is no just ground for holding that a given passage 



NOTES 78-80. 97 

is interpolated in the fact that it disturbs the continuity of 
the poem as a whole. Nitzsch's effort by this means to 
bring the speech of Achilles, II. 18 : 49-91, into harmony 
with the ninth book (Sagenpoesie, p. 180 sqq.) is especially 
characteristic in this respect, and is thoroughly examined by 
Schomann, Jahn's Jahrb. 69, De ret. Horn. pp. 13-15. The 
only conditions under which the assumption of an interpola- 
tion is justifiable are laid down distinctly and decisively by 
Kirchhoff, Die Composition der Odyssee, p. 201 (Philol. 19). 
Friedlander's idea (Die Horn. Kritik), that these discrepan- 
cies are, in most cases, to be regarded as " lingering traces 
of a long separation" of the parts of a poem originally one, 
is applied far too freely in interpretation. 

80 The fact that these contradictions run through the 
whole extent of the poem is a serious objection to Grote's in- 
termediate hypothesis (History of Greece, Am. ed. II. p. 175 
sqq.), that our Iliad is made up of two long poems, an Achil- 
leid, consisting of books I., VIII., XI.-XXIL, and an Iliad, 
consisting of books II.-VII., with perhaps IX. and X. This 
theory Friedlander (Die Horn. Kritik, etc.) endeavors to es- 
tablish with additional arguments. It is attacked, as pre- 
serving the unity of the poems too much, by W. Ribbeck 
(Philol. 8), and as sacrificing the unity, by Baumlein (Philol. 
11). [See, also, Transactions of the Am. Philological Asso- 
ciation, 1876. A new form of Grote's theory, advanced by 
TV". D. Geddes, Problem of the Homeric Poems (London, 
1878), is open to the objection mentioned above. The chief 
novelty of this theory is, that it tries to show by internal 
arguments that the portion of the Iliad regarded by Grote 
as an addition to the original Achilleid (with a few scat- 
tered passages) was composed by the author of the Odys- 
sey, and that to him, an Asiatic Greek, belong the name 

7 



98 THE OKIGIN OF TI1E HOMERIC POEMS. 

Homer and the traditions connected with that name. — Tr.] 
Essentially the same position was taken, before the publi- 
cation of Grote's theory, by Duntzer, Jahn's Jahrb., Suppl. 
2 (also in his Horn. Abhandlungen). 

81 Roth, indeed (Abendl. Philos. II.), regards Homer as the 
poet who wrote the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Thebaid, and 
several other great epics, each by a single effort of inde- 
pendent creative power ; but he, with all his other learn- 
ing, has not grasped the real point of the Homeric ques- 
tion, as was shown in note 41. 

82 That the composer of the Iliad as a single poem took 
up into his work earlier songs, largely or entirely unaltered, 
is repeatedly affirmed by Mtzsch (Sagenpoesie, pp. 109, 
123, 126, etc.) and Baumlein (essay prefixed to the Tauch- 
nitz edition, p. xx. etc.). How slightly the view here adopt- 
ed by Nitzsch differs from that which he opposes is shown 
by Schomann (De ret. Horn.) and Kochly (De II. carm. diss. 
III.). Bergk (Gr. Lit. I. p. 523) remarks against this view : 
" The style of those earlier lays would not fit into the new 
form of art ; therefore they cannot have been incorporated 
bodily into the new poems, but can only have served, like 
rough sketches of a picture, to stimulate and inspire the 
creative genius who laid the foundation of Greek epic po- 
etry." Duntzer disposes of a portion of those passages in 
which Lachmann found his evidence of inconsistency as 
arbitrary insertions by the rhapsodes (on which see note 
112). As to the remaining genuine body of the poems, he 
says (Horn. Abhandl. p. xii.) : " That each of the two great 
poems was originally a single whole we dare not assume; 
for neither does the action, in its main features, constitute 
a single unity, nor does the same poetic spirit animate the 
whole." In this place may be mentioned the " new hypoth- 



NOTES 81-83. 99 

esis" of J. Minckwitz (see note 27), according to which a 
bard of the people, by name Homer, living at the time of 
the Trojan war, having acquired unwonted facility of ex- 
pression by long practice from early youth in the. produc- 
tion of lyric and short epic poems, composed a number of 
detached lays upon the heroic deeds of the Trojan war and 
the fortunes of the Greek chiefs on their return home, which 
were received with great applause by those who heard them. 
These detached lays, connected only in subject-matter, and 
varying in style from the very beginning, were handed 
down orally for centuries by the rhapsodes, until, in a 
somewhat mutilated and time-worn shape, they were col- 
lected together by Peisistratos. The apparent unity of the 
Iliad and Odyssey is due to editorial revision, which pieced 
them together, as well as might be, with all possible fidelity 
to the existing form of each portion. The one important 
feature of this " new hypothesis," that which puts it in op- 
position to Lachmann on one side and to Mtzsch on the 
other, the supposition of a single poet for many separate 
lays, may be found in the Blatter fur literarische Unterhal- 
tung, 1844, N. 126-129 (cf. Curtius, Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. 
Gym., 1854). This theory does not touch the most essen- 
tial points, the original existence of independent lays, not 
designed to form one story, and the combination of them 
as a subsequent stage of their historjr. The impossibilities 
it contains, along with much that is true and generally ad- 
mitted, cannot be discussed here. 

83 Mtzsch, Sagenpoesie, p. 281 sq. A conjectural analy- 
sis of the Iliad into its original songs is offered by Kochly, 
Iliadis carmina XYI. (Leipzig, 1866). The reasons for his 
analysis are given in a series of monographs (" De Iliadis 
carminibus dissertationes " in the Zurich University pro- 



100 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

grammes from 1850 on, and " Hektor's Losung," in the 
Gratulations-Schrift cler Ziir. Univ. an Welcker, 1858). His 
views are assailed or modified in many particulars by W. 
Eibbeck, Jahn's Jahrb. 85, and by J. La Roche, Zeitschr. fur 
d. osterr. Gym., 1862. 

84 See the admirable development of this point by W. 
Wackernagel, in the essay mentioned in note 15 (II. p. 76 
sqq.). 

85 The only exception to this remark is, that the close of 
the Odyssey, from 23 : 297 on, which Aristarchus long ago 
rejected, was subjected, not long after the appearance of 
Wolf's Prolegomena, to thorough examination by F. A. W. 
Spohn, Commentatio de extrema Odysseae parte, etc. (1816). 

86 This opinion is expressed not only by Nitzsch, Baum- 
lein, Grote (II. p. 164 sqq., Am. edition), Friedlancler (Die 
Horn. Kritik), but also by Schomann, in the often-mentioned 
review, Jakn's Jahrb. 69. " To regard the Odyssey as a 
patchwork of originally independent lays seems to me rank 
absurdity, although it is certain that it contains interpola- 
tions, some of them of considerable extent, which, however, 
can be positively recognized as such. But the poem as a 
wdiole is the noble conception of a lofty genius, who had in 
this kind of poetry no model, and, so far as we can judge, 
no worthy imitator." On this Sengebusch (Horn. diss. II.) 
remarks that he fears Schomann will some day seem to him- 
self to have decided w 7 ith more force than truth. Bernhar- 
dy (Gr. Lit. 2d ed. II. p. 119) says of the Odyssey: "Here we 
find the epic conception to have advanced not only to the 
having one person as a moral centre, but also to unity of 
artistic construction ; the action proceeds in strictly nat- 
ural sequence, the plot is far more compact than that of the 
Iliad, and all its parts w T ork together to one end. With a 



NOTES S4-S7. 101 

fully developed art. the poet of the Odyssey groups the ele- 
ments of his scheme, and makes them easily co-operate in 
a sphere of sober thought combined with, serene wisdom. 
His poem, which is the earliest example of the organized 
artistic epic style, constitutes a chief part of the present 
Odyssey, and to his original shaping of the plot is due the 
precise interaction of the incidents, and the regular pro- 
gressive advance through them to the catastrophe.*' On 
the other hand. Bekker. at the close of his criticism of the 
opening lines of the Odyssey (Horn. Blatter, p. 107), says : 
k, It would not be much to the credit of the Greek intellect 
if Wolf's statement (Proleg. p. cxviii.i were true, that the 
admirable plan and structure of the Odyssey is to be re- 
garded as the noblest monument of Greek genius." [To 
the same effect Steinthal. Zeitschr. fur Yolkerpsychologie 
und Sprachwissenschaft. 7,1871. — Tm] 

- : Apart from the unimportant book by Heerklotz. Be- 
trachtungen liber die Odyssee. Trier, 1854 ('see Friedlander, 
Jahn's Jahrb. 79). and the valuable remarks in A. Jacob's 
work mentioned in note 68. most of the discussions bear- 
ing on the origin of the Odyssey have been confined to sep- 
arate parts of the poem. e. g. on the openiug lines by Bek- 
ker (Horn. Blatten : on the Telemachie by Hennings 1 1858 ; 
cf Friedlander, Jahn's Jahrb. 79: Baumlein. Jahn's Jahrb. 
SI) : on the opening lines of the fifth, book by Schmitt (De 
secundo in Od. deorum concilio. Friburg, 1852) : on the 
gardens of Alkinous by L. Friedlander (Philol. 6) : on the 
eleventh book by Lauer (De Od. libri XL forma genuina et 
patria, Berlin. 1843) : on the first thirteen books by Kochly 
(Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym.. 1862 : reprinted, with notes and 
a statement as to the separate lays in the latter half of the 
poem, in the Verhandlungen der 21. Versammlung deut- 



102 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

scher Philologen, etc., Leipzig, 1863) ; on the XIII.-XIX. 
books by R. Volkmann (Quaestiones epicae, Leipzig, 1854) ; 
Rhode (Schulprogramme, Dresden, 1848, Brandenburg, 
1858; cf. Friedlander, Jabn's Jahrb. 79); Meister (Philol. 
8) ; on the twentieth book by Bekker (Horn. Blatter) ; on 
the portion from 23 : 297 through by Liesegang (De extre- 
ma Od. parte, Bielefeld, 1855). 

88 This point in regard to the Odyssey is stated with 
praiseworthy frankness, and proved by conclusive instan- 
ces, in Faesi's introduction to his Odyssey, 4th ed. pp. 37- 
44. 

89 Kirchhoff, Die Horn. Odyssee, p. viii. 

90 A. Jacob, as above (note 68), p. 475 sq. See also note 
109. 

91 A. Jacob, pp. 508-514. 

92 A. Jacob, p. 363 sqq. ; Faesi, p. 39. As to the confused 
advice which Athene gives Telemachos in the first book, see 
Kirchhoff, Die Composition der Odyssee, I. ; Friedlander, 
Analecta Homerica, Jahn's Jahrb. Suppl. 3 ; Kammer, Die 
Einheit der Odyssee. Friedlander (Horn. Kritik, and so after 
him Nitzsch,Epische Poesie) seeks to remove the difficulty 
as to the unexplained prolongation of the stay of Telema- 
chos at Sparta as follows : " This delay is undeniably in 
conflict with his original design. But the freedom which 
the poet here allows himself is the less surprising, because 
he might reasonably assume that no one of his hearers 
would notice it. The really wonderful thing is, that this is 
the only instance worth mention of such poetic license in 
the whole poem ; for the few other inconsistencies are much 
more probably to be ascribed to defective preservation than 
to careless composition of the poem." The examples given 
in the text may perhaps show that this is not the " only 



NOTES 8S-103. 103 

instance worth mention of such license." and also that the 
inconsistencies run too deep into the structure of the poem 
to be ascribed to " defective preservation. " 

93 Schmitt. in the work mentioned in note 87 : Faesi, 
p. 37 ; A. Jacob, p. 387. Nitzsch gets over this difficulty 
easily by the very convenient phrase, "parallel narratives"' 
(Philol. 17, pp. 1-28) : cf. note 71. 

94 Faesi on Od. 15 : 1. Still, even in this case, it is possi- 
ble to find an apparent solution. One is given in detail by 
Xitzsch (Epische Poesie. p. 128 sq.), which it is worthwhile 
to read through, and then ask yourself if it is intelligible. 

93 A. Jacob, p. 421. Most of the passages in which the 
woes of Odysseus are said to be caused by Poseidon's wrath, 
Duntzer ('Horn. Abh. p. 409; regards as interpolations. 

M Faesi. p. 41 : A. Jacob, p. 369. 481: Kern. Bemerkun- 
gen liber die Freier in der Odyssee. Progr. des Gym. zu Ulm, 
1861 : Hartel. Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym.. 1871." 

97 Faesi. p. 40 sq. Cf. the attempt of Ameis (on 11 : 116) 
to explain away the present Karkdovaiv. 

95 A. Jacob, p. 481. 

99 Od. 13 : 399 : 16 : 176. Faesi, in this case, contrary to 
his usual practice in regard to the Odyssey, tries to estab- 
lish harmony by the meaning he gives to Kvdrsoc. Ameis 
(Anhang on 16 : 176) avails himself of physiological science. 
See, on the other hand, the plain statements of A. Jacob, 
p. 463 : KirchhofY. Composition der Od., VI. 

100 Faesi. p. 41. 

101 A. Jacob, pp. 462. 471 sq., 507. 

102 Eurykleia and Euiynome : Faesi. p. 41 ; A. Jacob, p. 
477. Faesi gives several other instances of this kind. 

103 See Bekker's pregnant essay on the twentieth book 
(Horn. Blatter). 



104 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

104 A. Jacob, pp. 430, 433 sq. 

105 Od. 17 : 360-491 ; 18 : 346-428 ; 20 : 284-344. See Meis- 
ter (Philol. 8). 

106 Od. 14 : 29 sqq. ; 16 : 4 sq., 162 ; 17 : 291 sqq. 

107 Od. 13 : 257-286 ; 14 : 199-359 ; 17 : 419-444 ; 19 : 172- 
248. There is still another in 24 : 303-314. Cf. A. Jacob, 
p. 453 sqq. ; Faesi, p. 43. 

108 Ocl. 4 : 793 ; 16 : 450 ; 18 : 188 ; 20 : 54 ; 21 : 357- 
23 : 5. A. Jacob, p. 480. 

109 Od. 7 : 215 ; 17 : 503 ; 18 : 118, and cf. 15 : 344 ; 17 : 286 ; 

18 : 53. That the Xaifjiapyia and yaarpiixapyia of Odysseus 
were astounding to readers in ancient times appears from 
the combinations and comments in Athenaeos X. 412 b. 

110 Od. 15 : 160-165, 525-528 ; 17 : 160, 541 ; 19 : 535 sqq. ; 
20 : 103, 345 sqq. ; 21 : 411-413 ; 22 : 240. 

111 The cases given in the text by no means exhaust the 
list of strange repetitions and accumulations, e. g. the two- 
fold direction given to Odysseus as to the way to the pal- 
ace of Alkinous, Od. 6 : 300 ; 7 : 20 (A. Jacob, p. 348) ; the 
repeated presentation of gifts to him by the Phaeakians, 
Od.8:385; 11:335; 13:10; the references by Penelope, Od. 

19 : 518 sqq. ; 20 : 65 sqq., to the myth of Pandareos, with 
different conceptions of the myth (Bekker, Horn. Blatter, 
p. 125) ; Odysseus complains ad nauseam of the ruinous 
effect of his stomach's resistless demands, Od. 7 : 216; 15 : 
344 ; 17 : 286-289 ; 18 : 53 ; he tests repeatedly the faithful- 
ness of his servants, Od. 14 : 459 ; 15 : 304 ; 16 : 305 (A. Ja- 
cob, p. 465), etc. As to the poetic value of the second half 
of the Odyssey, see especially Kirchhoff, Composition der 
Odyssee, p. 209. 

112 Kirchhoff, in his book Die Homerische Odyssee und 
ihre Entstehung (1859), has given the result of several years 



NOTES 104-112. 105 

of study in such form as to show to the eye his theory, 
printing separately the several successive layers of which 
the poem consists. He is very far from thinking that he 
can draw an exact line between the original and the added 
portions, but chooses the above as the simplest way of giv- 
ing his conclusions definitely. The prefixed explanations 
do not undertake to give the reasons for his analysis, but 
simply to supplement the unavoidable deficiencies of this 
method of stating it. " The Odyssey, as we have it, is 
neither the single creation of one poet, only disfigured by 
interpolations here and there, nor a collection of indepen- 
dent poems from different authors and dates, strung together 
in the order of events, but a systematic enlargement and re- 
modelling in a later age of an originally simpler nucleus. 
This nucleus, which I call 'the earlier revision,' in which 
form the poem was known until about 660 B.C., is not it- 
self simple, but consists of an earlier and a later part, which 
belong to different times, different authors, and different 
points on the coast of Asia Minor. The first and earliest 
part of the whole poem, 4 the Return of Odysseus,' is an 
original unit which cannot be further analyzed. It formed, 
without the addition of the second part, a complete inde- 
pendent whole. It is not, however, a popular epic in the 
usual sense of the term, but belongs to the period when the 
artistic epic was being developed/' This " Return of Odys- 
seus" consisted of Od. 1 : 1-87; 5 : 43-7 : 17; 7 : 84-102, 
132-184, 233-242 ; then followed so much of the narrative of 
the adventures of Odysseus as remains in a tolerable state 
of preservation in Od. 9 : 16-564; then (according to essay 
IV. in his other book, to be presently mentioned) the origi- 
nal part of the vsMia in Od. 11 ; then Od. 7 : 251-297 ; 11: 
333-353 ; 13 : 7-9, 13-184. The second part of -the earlier 



106 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC TOEMS. 

revision" consisted of nearly the whole of Od. 13 : 185-23 : 
296, excluding all passages which in any way directly or 
indirectly presuppose the Telemachia, and a few others for 
other reasons. This part was added before the first Olym- 
piad, with special knowledge of and reference to the former, 
apart from which it never existed, and to which it is de- 
cidedly inferior in poetic quality. " Between 660 and 580 
B.C. this ' earlier revision ' was subjected to a thorough re- 
working by some person unknown, whereby the length of 
the poem was increased by more than one half, the text 
much changed, and here and there gaps left in it. This 
reworking was occasioned by the desire, on the one hand, 
to complete the Odyssey by incorporating into it the con- 
tents of certain earlier poems of the same circle of myths, 
and, on the other, to give to the whole a conclusion more 
in accordance with the taste of the time." This later re- 
vision became then the foundation of the work of the edi- 
torial commission of Peisistratos, and had a few interpola- 
tions made in it by them. — The reasonings on which a 
part of these conclusions were based are stated in seven 
essays, which appeared first in different periodicals and 
afterwards without change in Die Composition der Odys- 
see, gesammelte Aufsatze von Kirchhoff (Berlin, 1869). 
(Essay I. will be found in Rhein. Mus. 15 ; II. in Philol. 15 ; 
III. in Monatsberichte der Kon. Akad. der Wissenschaften, 
Berlin, 1861 ; IV. in Philol. 15; V. in Rhein. Mus. 15 ; VI. 
in Jahn's Jahrb. 1865 ; VII. in Philol. 19.) The first essay 
shows, with a conclusiveness rare in such matters, that the 
part of the first book from line 88 on is a distorted and 
clumsy reproduction of the corresponding passage in the 
second book. The establishment of this point not only 
shuts out the possibility of maintaining original unity of 



NOTE 112. 107 

conception for the Odyssey, but also settles that " the pas- 
sage referred to of the second book, with all that can be 
shown to stand in original and organic connection with it, 
proceeds from a different and an earlier poet than the cor- 
responding part of the first book with its belongings ; the 
poet of the latter knew the passage in the second book and 
used it (in part in its precise words) in his own way and to 
his own ends." His object plainly was to connect the nar- 
rative of the journey of Telernachos with that of the return 
of Odysseus. — In the fifth essay Kirchhoff undertakes to 
show, starting out from a remark of Aristarchus in refer- 
ence to Od. 12 : 374-390, that the passage in the narrative 
of Odysseus extending from 9 : 565 to 12 : 446 (with the ex- 
ception of the original part of the vskvio. — see essay fourth) 
was originally composed in the third person as told by the 
poet, and then rewritten in the first person as told by Odys- 
seus himself. Thus we have in the present narrative an 
original nucleus and a subsequent addition. The v&ema in- 
corporated into this addition is shown in the fourth essay 
to belong to the original nucleus. In the latter part of the 
third essay it is shown that several features borrowed from 
the myth of the Argonauts have been taken up into this 
subsequent addition. — In the first part of the third essay 
he points out in Od. 7 : 240-259 the place at which came 
originally the simpler, not yet enlarged, narrative of the 
wanderings of Odysseus, in answer to the question ad- 
dressed to him on his entrance into the palace of the Phae- 
akian king. — The sixth essay brings out the fact that the 
incident in the story which is minutely detailed in the 
thirteenth and elaborately made use of in the sixteenth 
book, the transformation of Odysseus by the wand of Athene, 
is not referred to at the critical point of his recognition by 



108 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

Penelope, where it could not but have been remembered, 
yet where only such change in his appearance is assumed as 
time and trials w T ould bring about. This serious incon- 
sistency in the twenty-third book is disguised by an inter- 
polation, the occasion of which is easily explained and its 
disturbing influence on the context manifest. — The seventh 
essay begins with a discussion of the two passages, Od. 16 : 
281-298 and 19 : 3-52, concerning the concealment of the 
arms, and shows that, contrary to the hitherto universal 
opinion that the former is an interpolation, the latter is 
really an awkward imitation of the former, and was intro- 
duced, together with the line Od. 22 : 141, in order to con- 
nect the topic of 16 : 281-298 with the narrative of the kill- 
ing of the suitors which otherwise does not recognize it. — 
In all these discussions of the inner structure of the Odys- 
sey it is characteristic of the writer's method that he does 
not content himself with pointing out contradictions and 
irreconcilable assumptions in the different parts of the 
poem, but rather demonstrates in every case the earlier and 
later strata of the work, and the intelligible purpose of the 
reviser in his changes. To determine approximately the 
time of these strata can be possible only by combination 
with other dates in the history of the growth of the Greek 
epic, and such combinations are made in the second, third, 
and fourth essays. The cyclic "Nostoi" (essay IV.), which 
belong to about 700 B.C., show knowledge of the third and 
fourth books of the Odyssey and of the original " Return 
of Odysseus " in the ninth book (including as above part 
of the vEKvia), but decidedly none of the enlarged version 
of his adventures contained in books X.-XII. From this 
it is certain that at that date the poem on the journey of 
Telemachos and the original "Return of Odysseus" were 



NOTE 112. 109 

in existence, and also that the later additions to the latter 
had not yet been incorporated with it ; it is also probable 
that these additions did not yet exist even as an indepen- 
dent poem. This latter point is raised from probability to 
certainty by a consideration from another source (essay III.). 
The later additions show a connection in the localities 
mentioned with a form of the Argonaut myth which can- 
not be earlier than the colonization of Kyzikos ; it follows 
that " the origin of the poem which forms the basis of 
books X.-XII. of the Odyssey falls at the earliest towards 
the end of the period 750-680 B.C., and its revision in the 
present form — that is, the final shaping of the first half of 
our Odyssey — not much before 660 B.C." On the other 
hand (essay II.), the Eoai, which belong between 620 and 
580 B.C., recognize the contents of the Odyssey as we have 
it in such a way as to warrant the inference that the final 
revision of the poein was somewhat generally known by 
580 B.C. 

But little has been done as yet in the way of thorough and 
unprejudiced examination of this closely connected chain 
of reasoning. The notices of the earlier work (Die Horn. 
Oclyssee, etc.), by W. Bibbeck and L. Friedlander, in Jahn's 
Jahrb. 79, may be left out of account, since they were written 
before the essays were published. Friedlander's review, in 
Jahn's Jahrb. 83, of the four earlier essays, expresses agree- 
ment in most points with Kirchhoff's views, though as to 
the origin of the confusion in the first book of the Odyssey 
he still maintains his own idea (Anal. Horn. p. 476) of a 
threefold revision; an idea which, by its unnecessary arti- 
ficialness, rather helps to make Kirchhoff's simpler theory 
more acceptable. W. Hart el's " Untersuchungen liber die 
Entstehung der Odyssee" (Zeitschr.fiir d. osterr.Gym., 1864, 



110 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

1865) ranks before all others for logical and keen-sighted 
penetration into Kirchhoff 's course of thought. This leads 
him to supply omissions in some of the essays, and to oppose 
some of the statements and reasonings, especially as to the 
recognition by the cyclic "Nostoi" of the Telemachia and 
the original " Return of Odysseus;" as to the shifting of the 
later additions from the third into the first person (against 
which see Nitzsch, Jahn's Jahrb. 81); and as to the point 
in the poem at which the original brief narrative of the 
wanderings of Odysseus is supposed to have stood. As 
to Steinthal's criticism of Kirchhoff's views (in the article 
mentioned in note 86), see the remarks of W. Hartel in a re- 
view of Mullenhoff's Deutsche Alterthumskunde (Zeitschrift 
fur d. osterr. Gym., 1871). A criticism of this whole theory 
of KirchhofTs, hostile in all particulars, is to be found in 
Duntzer's Kirchhoff, Kochly, und die Odyssee (Koln, 1872). 
The method of refutation is essentially the same throughout, 
that those passages on which Kirchhoff bases his conclu- 
sions are set aside as interpolations, to which he adds that 
other passages, to the connection of which Kirchhoff makes 
no objection, contain as much material for such criticism as 
those in which he finds evidence of growth by successive 
modifications. As to the former point, Kirchhoff lays down 
the principle (Compos, der Od. p. 201) : " To declare a pas- 
sage in any text an interpolation, without being able to as- 
sign an occasion for or design in its being inserted, is a 
thoroughly unscientific proceeding, by which investigations 
such as that into the origin of the Homeric poems cannot 
be furthered, but only hindered." This principle Diintzer 
repeatedly and emphatically rejects, e. g. p. 19 : "Kirchhoff 
plainly carries much too far his principle that the assertion 
of an interpolation cannot be scientifically justified unless 



NOTE 112. Ill 

the reason for it can be pointed out. Since no manifest in- 
congruit} r , breaking the pure, smooth flow of the poem, can 
have proceeded from the poet, any such blemish must be 
set aside as a clumsy addition, which we shall continue to 
ascribe to some improvising rhapsode until we get evi- 
dence of the existence in the flesh of Kirchhoff's later re- 
viser. For most interpolations one can imagine a reason, 
whicb, however, lias nothing more than a greater or less 
degree of probability in its favor ; but the interpolation is 
an objective fact, and when we consider the arbitrary ca- 
price, obeying only the sudden and often strange sugges- 
tion of the moment, manifest in the additions of the rhap- 
sodes, we see the unreasonableness of requiring an expla- 
nation of them in every case." It is plain from these and 
similar expressions, that only those can agree with Diint- 
zer's criticisms who can be satisfied with " arbitrary ca- 
price" and " strange suggestions of the moment." He finds 
the safeguard for right decision, in case of interpolations 
for which an occasion or motive cannot be found, ;n a full 
entrance into the spirit of the poet, such as results from a 
loving but critical following in his steps from sentence to 
sentence, from speech to speech, from incident to incident; 
when this is done, the spurious element excludes itself. 
This describes quite rightly the origin of the tact and feel- 
ing for inequality of character by which the spurious may 
be detected, but in order to lift this feeling above the 
dangers which belong to its subjective nature, and to be 
able to convince others of the truth of its decisions, it 
is necessary to support it by definite arguments. Duntzer 
himself has only to recall his own variations in the pas- 
sages he has proposed to exclude to see the justice of 
this demand. (Duntzer\s answer to these criticisms may 



112 THE OKIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

be found in his last book, Die Homerische Frage, Leip- 
zig, 1874.) 

With Hartel's essay, mentioned above (Untersuchungen, 
etc.), we may associate Heimreich's "Die Telemachie und 
der jiingere Nostos" (Progr. des Gym. zu Flensburg, 1871), 
inasmuch as it likewise accepts Kirchhoff's principles, but 
is led by them to somewhat different results, and so to a 
modification of his theory. The principal points of diver- 
gence are as follows : To remove all obscurity and confusion 
from the first book, Heimreich w T ould exclude the supposed 
interpolations, leaving thus lines 89 sq., 96, 102-269, 295-324 
(with probably 421-427 as a transition passage), which form 
an unobjectionable introduction to the journey of Telema- 
chos, and are the work of the same poet who composed the 
next three books. The Telemachia never existed as a sep- 
arate poem, but the same poet who composed it inserted it 
(or the greater part of it) between Ocl. 1 : 87 and 5 : 29 in the 
process of enlarging the Odyssey from its simpler original. 
As to the peculiarities of the Kirke-Episode, Heimreich 
makes some valuable remarks. His theory, in brief, is as 
follows : " There was originally a shorter poem on the re- 
turn of Odysseus (in substance the same with Kirchhoff's 
original ' Return,' but with the addition of the myths of 
Aeolos and of the Laestrygoni) ; this was expanded before 
the time of the c Nostoi ' of Agias (that is, probably before 
700 B.C.), by a second poet, to the compass of our Odyssey, 
with the exception, of course, of a few late interpolations." 
These criticisms of Heimreich's touch in part the points 
for which Kirchhoff has not yet published a statement of 
his reasons; such as the discrimination of the "later addi- 
tions " from the original " Return of Odysseus," and the in- 
dependence of the Telemachia. 



NOTE 112. 113 

All indirect attack upon Kirchhoff's investigations is 
contained in the section on the Odyssey in Bergk's Griech. 
Literatur-Geschichte. I pp. 654-726, in which, though there 
is, as usual, no mention of the labors of other scholars, the ref- 
erence is plain to those who know the literature of the sub- 
ject. The development of the present form of the poem 
out of the original Odyssey, which he ascribes to a different 
poet from that of the original Iliad, is explained by Bergk 
in essentially the same way as in the case of the Iliad (see 
note 27). But in this case he admits that the intruded mat- 
ter is not so extensive as to suppress, so completely as in 
the Iliad, the original, nor to disturb the structure so thor- 
oughly. "While some books, as the sixth, are almost free 
from interpolations, in others, as the eighth, only a moder- 
ate portion of the original poem remains, and in general 
the first half of the poem has suffered less at the hands of 
the reviser than the second. (On Bergk's treatment of the 
Odyssey, see W. Hartel's review, mentioned in note 27.) 
Bergk's attitude towards Kirchhoff's investigations may 
be most clearly seen in the case of the first book of the 
Odyssey. He regards the conversation of Athene with Te- 
lemachos as an essential pre-condition of the narrative of 
the three following books, but as so confused and blind 
that it cannot be ascribed to the original poet. "It is 
probable that the speech of Athene was lost in careless 
transmission ; then he who gave the Odyssey its present 
form endeavored to fill up as best he could, the serious 
gap, using, with no great skill, the hints to be found in the 
second book."' The introduction of the name of Mentes, 
also, is an addition, so that " but little of the original poem 
is to be found in the first book." Here the result of Kirch- 
hoff's investigation is reproduced ; but whereas that inves- 

S 



114 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

tigation confined itself to reasonable inferences from the 
actual form of the Odyssey, here we have added the hypoth- 
esis, unproved and hardly capable of proof, that the poor 
work of the reviser replaces the accidentally lost good 
work of the original poet. 

A minute criticism of Kirchhoff's whole theory will be 
found in Ed. Rammer's Die Einheit der Odyssee, nach 
Widerlegung der Ansichten von Lachmann-Steinthal, Koch- 
ly, Hennings, und Kirchhoff, dargestellt von Dr. Ed. Ram- 
mer in Konigsberg. — Anhang : Homerische Blatter von K. 
Lehrs (Leipzig, 1873). The first part of the book is occu- 
pied with the refutation announced in the title ; in the sec- 
ond part the author goes through the Odyssey, throwing 
out the lines he regards as interpolated, and presenting thus 
the poem in its pristine unity. But the criticism of those 
essays of Kirchhoff's which have to do with passages in 
the latter half of the Odyssey is to be found in this second 
part in connection with the author's statement of his own 
views. He conceives the poet of the Iliad and of the 
Odyssey as developing a profound ethical theme in a series 
of scenes or situations, in each of which, in turn, his fancy 
is actively at work, and his effort is to enchain his hearers 
by holding and busily occupying their imaginative vision. 
As he advanced in his work, we may suppose that his path 
teemed with ideas more richly, and so it came about that 
of the fresh details that flowed in upon his mind some were 
in conflict with what had gone before, a fact which neither 
poet nor hearers could be expected to observe, as neither 
had the whole before the mind at once. Even when the 
theme was fully worked out, the poem did not assume a 
fixed form, but remained in a certain fluid state, ever re- 
newed by the remarkable faculty of improvisation which 



NOTES 112, 113. 115 

constant practice developed. Then it passed through the 
hands of a host of lesser poets, who amplified and varied it 
greatly. Kainmer distinguishes (pp. 758-761) five different 
groups of such additions and changes. His refutation of 
Kirchhoff is naturally facilitated by the fact that he, even 
more decidedly than Duntzer, rejects Kirchhoff 's principle 
as to the cases in which one may assume the existence of 
an interpolation. Two brief notices (Schade's Wissensch. 
Monatsblatter, 1874 ; Altpreussische Monatsschrift, 1873) 
by Lehrs, whose disciple on this question Kammer avows 
himself to be, warmly commend this book, and another, by 
H. Weil (Revue Critique, 1874), expresses agreement with 
its principles. The reviewer in the Gottinger Gelehrter An- 
zeiger (1874) indicates by judicious extracts the treatment 
of the question in it, and shows by examples that the con- 
tents do not justify the assumption of infallibility on the 
part of the author. Similarly A. Bischoff, in Philol. An- 
zeiger (1875), and in Philologus, 34. Hennings replies, in 
J arm's Jahrb. (1874), to the criticism of his views, so far as 
applies to the first three books of the Odyssey. A care- 
ful account of Rammer's critical treatment of the first 
twelve books of the Odyssey is given by Dr. Lange, in 
the Zeitschrift fur d. Gym., 1875, Philol. Jahresbericht. 

113 In Lobell's TVeltgeschichte in Umrissen (1846), I. p. 
600 sqq.,is a statement of the order and relation in which 
Ritschl placed the incidents of the growth of the Iliad and 
Odyssey: "I. Period. Existence of certain heroic lays, cel- 
ebrating the Trojan war, immediately after its occurrence, 
at first among the Achaeans in Greece, and then among the 
colonies of Asia Minor. II. Period, perhaps 900-800 B.C. 
The unadulterated poetry of Homer and the Homeridae, 
still unwritten, with the digamma pronounced. Out of a 



116 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

rich abundance of epic lays the pre-eminent genius of Ho- 
mer selects a number, and combines them, fused together 
with his own productions, into an artistic unity, having for 
its central point, to which all parts have reference, a moral 
truth. This process is something far higher than mere 
compilation; it is the first creation of a great organized 
whole. Thus fully developed, the genuine Iliad and Odyssey 
are transmitted by the members of close guilds or schools 
of poets, while at the same time the detached songs, out of 
which they sprang, still survive. III. Period, 800-700 B.C. 
Circulation of the Homeric poems, still unwritten, but with 
gradual disappearance of the digamma and separation of 
the lays from one another by the rhapsodes, whose art is 
no longer in the hands of the Homeridae exclusively. The 
poems are also expanded by insertions. IV. Period, 700- 
600 B.C., in two divisions. (1) First commission of the 
poems to writing, without the digamma (for the Alexan- 
drian scholars found no trace of it remaining); continued 
separation of the lays by the rhapsodes, but no further ad- 
ditions to the poems, as may be inferred from the fact that 
Peisistratos finds them in existence as if handed down from 
antiquity. (2) The collection of separate parts to form 
larger units. Oral tradition continues, and arbitrary separa- 
tion and combination of the lays ; but, also, care is taken 
(e. g. by Solon) to prevent falsification of the traditional 
text by having standard written copies of single lays. V. 
Period, 600-200 B.C. Peisistratos, by having a copy of 
the poems written out in the original order, so far as it 
could be recovered, puts an end at once to the corruption 
of the text, and to the separation and arbitrary linking to- 
gether of individual lays. The ordinance of Hipparchos 
secures for a long time the practice of connected declama- 



NOTES 114-116. 117 

tion of the poems. At the same time copies are mul- 
tiplied of the entire poems, they begin to be the subject 
of learned discussion among their admirers (sTrau^rai), 
and are transcribed into the new alphabet. VI. Peiiod. 
That of the Alexandrian critics/' A considerable part 
of the statements here made as to the first four periods 
lies beyond the region of proof; and another part of them 
may fairly be called untenable, in view of the foregoing 
exposition of the subject, and the investigations on which 
it is based. 

114 See AY.TTackernagers essay (I. p. 341 sqq.), mentioned 
in note 15. 

113 As to the relation between legend and history, see 
Lauer, Geschichte der Horn. Poesie, p. 163. 

113 1 have let these two sentences, which recognize a nu- 
cleus of historical fact in the Trojan myths, stand as they 
were originally delivered, although I am far from being 
willing to maintain that view now. On the history of the 
development of epic poems on these myths, so far as it is 
sketched in the succeeding pages, no direct influence is ex- 
erted by one's opinion as to the origin of the myths them- 
selves ; and I do not find myself in a position to reach a 
decision, by independent examination, irpon the ingenious 
combinations by which a solution of the latter question is 
sought. See Curtius, Griech. Geschichte, I. p. 113 sqq. (Am. 
edition, I. p. 145 sqq.), and the comprehensive and minute 
investigations of Mullenhoff, Deutsche Alterthumskunde, I. 
pp. 5-73. The admirable summary of these investigations 
in a review by W. Hartel (Zeitschr. fur d. osterr. Gym., 1871) 
shows incidentally, in regard to the Odyssey, how Miillen- 
hoff's investigations confirm, from a totally different point 
of view, Kirchhoff's ideas. 



118 THE ORIGIN OF THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

117 On the bards, see Welcker, Ep. Cycl. I. p. 340. 

118 This inference from the names is in WackernagePs 
essay, above referred to, I. p. 343. 

119 Welcker, Ep. Cycl. II. p. 11. 

120 The opposite inference from this same case, narnely, 
that the songs of Demodokos u contain evident traces of a 
great connected epic poem," is made by Welcker, Ep. Cycl. 
I. p. 348; Baumlein, Jahn's Jahrb. 75 and 81 ; and Nitzsch, 
Ep. Poesie, p. 197 sqq. 

121 Of course, in this statement only those dates are in- 
cluded which are positively or probably based on actual 
tradition. Of those based only on combinations, at least 
one carries Homer back to the time of the Trojan war (see 
note 42). 

122 For the authorities as to competitive chanting of epic 
songs, see Bernhardy, Griech. Lit. I. p. 252 (2d ed.). For 
the difference between bards and rhapsodes, see Welcker, 
Ep. Cycl. I. pp. 358-406. The distinction is ignored in the 
text, not because it is questioned at all, but only because it 
is comparatively unimportant in this connection. 

123 Lazar der Serbencar, nach serbischen Sagen und Hel- 
dengesangen, von Siegf. Kapper, 1851. This example and 
the following one are cited by Miklosich, Verhandlungen 
der achtzehnten Yersammlung deutscher Philologen, p. 3. 

124 Wackernagel, as above, II. p. 81. A recent study 
of this subject by C. d'He'ricault, Essai sur l'Origine de 
TEpopge Francaise (Paris, 1859), I know only by quota- 
tions. 

125 Compare the poetic style of books I.-X. with that of 
XI.-XVIIL, and then with that of XIX.-XXIV. 

126 It is interesting to note the opinion on this point indi- 
rectly expressed by Aristotle, when, in speaking of the prop- 



NOTES 117-128. 119 

er length of an epic, he does not mention the Homeric po- 
ems as a model, as he does in all other respects, but, instead, 
lays down the rule that, in order that the whole may admit 
of being taken in at one view, it should be shorter than the 
Homeric poems, and not exceed in length the (three or four) 
tragedies adapted to be performed together. Arist. Poet. 
24, 1459 b IT. Cf. Yahlen. Beitrage zu Arist. Poetik. III. 
pp. 287 sq., 334 sq. (Sitzungsber. der Wiener Akad. vol. 56). 

127 "The object of the Athenian statesman in this meas- 
ure was the only one intelligible and natural in his time, to 
encourage competition. He aimed to introduce the most 
difficult form of contest, in which only the ablest rhapsodes 
would succeed. To introduce the memorizing of the whole 
poems, as a novelty, into the system of the rhapsode's art. 
was surely a matter having no kind of connection with his 
domain.'' Lehrs. Zur Horn. Interpolation, Rhein. Mus. X. 
F. IT. p. 491. 

128 On this last point Mor. Haupt speaks with convincing 
arguments and well-earned authority in his " Festrede fiber 
den Gewinn den die deutsche Philologie der classischen 
Philologie gewahrt," Ber. iiber die Yerhandlungen der Kon.- 
sachsisch. Gesellsch. der TVissensehaften, 2d vol.. 1848. pp. £0 
sqq., 100. 



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